The DMV, Draft Five, and the Cost of Endurance

In May of 2025, my niece called me in tears. Her family car had broken down. Both she and her husband work, and without two vehicles, getting through the week suddenly became complicated in a very real way.

I’d been driving the same Hyundai Elantra for almost sixteen years and had loosely planned to buy a new car in 2026. I could afford to move that timeline up, so I told her she could have my car, and I’d buy a new one. It was simple. It felt like the kind of good deed that should come with minimal friction. I bought the new car the next day. That’s when the problem started.

To transfer the old car to her, I needed the title. Somewhere between buying the car in Las Vegas, moving states, and just living life, the title disappeared—or maybe I never got it in the first place. I searched every document I owned. Nothing. Which is saying something, given that I’m an information keeper by nature. And yet, somehow, this one thing was gone.

What followed was months of frustration and dead ends. Phone calls led nowhere, and the basic information I was asked for—old license plate numbers, a driver’s license I hadn’t held in years, details from a loan I’d paid off more than a decade earlier—might as well have belonged to someone else.

I live in Austin now. The car was purchased in Las Vegas. Appointments at the DMV were booked six weeks out. Every explanation came with this unspoken assumption that I should have somehow known to do all this years ago. Eventually, it became clear that the only way forward was in person. So at the end of July, I flew to Las Vegas.

At the DMV, the woman helping me found my old records immediately—my driver’s license number, the license plate, all of it. Then she asked for a lien release. I told her I’d never received one.

She disappeared into the back for a few minutes—long enough for me to start rehearsing what I'd say when she came back with nothing. When she returned, she slid a single sheet of paper across the counter. It listed the name of the bank that had held the loan.

It was the same bank I had already called—the one that had calmly explained, weeks earlier, that I no longer existed in their system.

I nearly cried right there, which felt absurd—I was sitting at a busy DMV counter—but my throat had already started doing that tight, telltale thing. The kind DMV lady must have seen it on my face. She softened immediately and told me if I could get the paperwork that day, I could come straight back to her window and she'd take care of the rest.

I walked out to the parking lot, sat in my friend’s car, and cried anyway.

This surprised me. I almost never cry over my own life. I prefer my catharsis secondhand, through books and movies and stories where someone else unravels so I don’t have to. Crying over a car title felt absurd, and yet there I was—overwhelmed by the time, the money, and the fact that what started as a simple good deed had turned into a months-long ordeal.

It wasn't really about the title. It was about feeling powerless inside a system that didn't care about good intentions or preparation or effort. It only cared whether I'd learned to ask for the right thing in the right way.

When I called the bank again, this time armed with more precise language, they found my loan. They admitted they had never sent the lien release. They mailed it. I scheduled another DMV appointment, flew back to Las Vegas, submitted everything, and waited.

Then I waited some more.

Then I paid additional fees I hadn’t known about and waited again.

By the time the title finally arrived and I could sign it over, it was nearly Halloween. Four days later, I went house-hunting with no intention of actually buying, put down a deposit within hours, and was under contract the same day. A far more expensive decision that was infinitely easier.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, and not coincidentally, I was also working on draft five of my book.

Earlier this summer, I hired an editor. She was supposed to do both a developmental and copy edit. Instead, she hated the book. She didn't understand the characters or the plot, kept reading it as a romance (which it is not), and her feedback was blunt and, at times, brutal. It landed very differently than the thoughtful responses I'd gotten from beta readers.

I wanted to ignore it. I considered walking away entirely. Instead, I stayed with the work.

I took what was useful, set aside what wasn't, and labored through each chapter anyway. Progress slowed way down. Every morning, I got up at 5:30 a.m. and worked for thirty or forty-five minutes before my day job, rewriting sentences one at a time. There was no shortcut, no clever workaround, no moment where it suddenly got easier.

There were days I wondered why I was doing this at all. I didn’t start writing to sell a million copies. I started to see if I could write a book. I had already proven that. Continuing felt optional and strangely punishing. I questioned whether I was still doing it out of conviction, or simply because I’d been talking about this book for years and didn’t know how to stop.

What changed over those months wasn’t just the manuscript. It was my tolerance for frustration. I learned that craft improves more slowly than ego would like. That people-pleasing has limits. That trying to appeal to everyone is a losing strategy, and that choosing your readers isn't failure—it's clarity.

I finished draft five two days before Christmas. It felt less like an achievement and more like I could finally stop carrying something heavy around. There is still more work ahead. There probably always will be. But the book will ship in 2026, and that part is no longer negotiable.

Some things are only rewarded by endurance. Not intelligence. Not preparation. Just staying with the work long enough to see the other side. I don't know if this ever gets easier. I only know I'm still committed to finishing, and that matters more to me now than it used to.

As 2026 begins, the book is still unfinished in the way all books are until they're not. There's more work ahead, probably more frustration than I'd like, but I've learned that staying with the process counts for something—even when progress feels slow or invisible.

For now, that’s enough. I’m still here, and I’m still working.