There’s No Such Thing as a Manuscript
Just unfinished books. Published or not.
“Manuscript” is a delay word. A placeholder. It says, This isn’t real yet. It keeps the thing at a safe distance.
But your book isn’t waiting to become real. It already is. You’re just not treating it that way.
There’s no stage before the book. There’s no rehearsal. What you’re writing now is the book. Whether you call it a draft, a process, a maybe-later pile, it’s still the book.
Some books get published. Some don’t. Some are read. Some are left behind. That has nothing to do with whether they’re books.
It’s tempting to think of yourself as someone on the way to becoming an author. It gives you time. Identity. Something to improve. But there is no such person. There’s just what gets written, and whether it’s shared.
The rest is decoration.
So no, you’re not working on a manuscript. You’re already inside the book. It’s happening now. And the part of you that thinks it needs more time to become real, that’s not the writer. That’s just another sentence.
You can keep going, or you can stop. But you don’t need to wait. The book isn’t.
