Pub Day, it’s called. That’s what the publishers call it when your book gets published. They call it Pub Day.

This is the day when the book you’ve been working on for the past year finally hits shelves. The day when your words go out into the world. The day when it all becomes real.

This is the day when you cannot resist, no matter how cool you pretend to be, walking into a random Barnes and Noble just to see your book on a shelf.

Your book. With your name on the jacket.

And when you see it, sitting there among the others, you feel something. Something huge. You dust off the jacket and make sure your book looks nice and crisp. You flip through the pages just to make sure everything is in working order.

When the employee finds you and asks if you need help, you touch your own book and say, “No, I’m just browsing.”

And the employee who—according to book-store dress code—has multiple piercings, pink mohawk, and many tattoos, stares at you. “Why are you touching that book?”

“Because I know the author,” you say.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

Pub Day is a big deal. Not to anyone else but you. Hardly anyone in the great wide world actually cares whether your novel is published.

Fewer care that you’ve spent the greater part of a year working with fictional people, in a fictional setting, who do fictional things.

But you care.

Because you still remember what brought you here. You remember your father’s untimely end. And how he made the front page of the newspaper the day before his fate, because he lost his mind and tried to kill his own family.

And you remember how you felt when the sheriff deputies told you that he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. And how they had to use his dental records to identify him.

You remember all the emotional baggage you carried, and still do. You remember everything.

You remember silly things like, the way your dad ate popcorn. And how he used to sneak cigars during baseball games. And how he kissed your hair before bed.

You also remember that it was your father who first told you that you ought to become a writer. You were in third grade. You wrote a book report, on your old man’s typewriter. And your daddy was impressed. He eyed your double-spaces pages, and he gave you a look like he’d just discovered teeth.

And you remember how you disappointed everyone when you dropped out of seventh grade, shortly after his death. You threw your education away. You squandered your youth on idiocy.

You still remember how you earned your high-school equivalent as a grown man. And how community college saved your life.

And how it was your elderly creative writing teacher who told you that you were the first real writer to ever darken her doors. And how she told you that, even though you were an adult, it wasn’t too late to follow your heart.

And you did. You wrote for little mom-and-pop newspapers. Then you wrote for magazines. Then books.

And now here you are. Living in this moment. You are an author. A real author. No, you’re not rich. You’re not famous. You’re not even remotely special in the literary world. There are hundreds—no, thousands of better writers than you. John Grisham’s bowel movements make your manuscript look like a Hardy Boys novel.

But you’re doing it. You’re not that sad kid anymore. You’re not a charity case. You’re not an adult college student, eating supper in your truck, doing your homework by the dashboard light.

You’re no longer that damned old fool you used to be. You are just a regular fool now. And there’s a difference.

This is Pub Day.