Most
people (and readers) think that writing must be an easy job. Picture
getting up whenever you want, staying in your PJ’s all day, leaning
back and sipping hot coffee while you look at what you have just
written and decide if it’s ok, and think about what your characters
should do or say next … or maybe deciding to think about those
things while you sit outside on the patio with your coffee … or
thinking maybe you will take a leisurely nap and worry about it
later.
The
images are endless, and usually something to make you sigh as you
work hard at your own job and daydream about the lovely, fulfilled
life of a writer, let alone the money that must come in for such an
“easy” job.
NOT!!
You
get up early in order to get household things done as well as yard
work outside, or to get shopping done, or the other million-and-one
things EVERYBODY needs to do daily. Most writers also have regular
jobs to go to every day. They have families and all the social doings
that go with kids in school, husbands who want their attention, meals
to cook, sometimes diapers to change, or at the other end of the
child spectrum, teenagers to deal with. They have family challenges,
personal problems, health problems. They try to keep in touch with
friends and close relatives, and most of the time, all these things
are a real burden when trying to focus your brain on a fictitious
story with fictitious characters who are as real to the author as
their own family. It is a huge matter of focusing amid constant
multi-tasking.
Writing
is a mental, physical and emotional challenge, and you have to really
love it to keep doing it while living your “real” life.
Over
the years of facing everything above as well as several major
surgeries and personal family problems that rise above the norm, I
have written 76 novels – all very long, very emotional, very
detailed – all requiring hours and hours of research and planning –
all full of real history. And most while living the busy life
mentioned above. Many nights I stayed up writing until around 2 a.m.
while everybody else slept, then was up at 5:30 a.m. to get everybody
off to school and work (including my own full-time job) all over
again. For years I slept between 3 and 5 hours a night.
I
could go on for pages and pages about what it takes to write even one
big book. I have written 76 of them. And once-through doesn’t do
it. You write the story, go back and re-write it because of changes
you know it needs, then go back and re-write it again because of
editing, then edit it again and make all the corrections, then send
it to an editor who sends it back full of errors and suggestions, so
you do more re-writing and make more corrections. You read it again
and catch more errors. (You would be surprised at what the brain
“sees” that isn’t there or is incorrect.)
A
writer is so fixated on the story and the characters that all those
little boo-boos just fly right by your attention. After several
readings and several re-writes, the book must be converted for
Amazon’s print and Kindle requirements, and you have to read it
AGAIN in that form to make sure nothing was left out or mixed up,
make sure the spacing is right, and – again – catch errors. Yes,
even at that point you will find tiny errors. People have asked me if
I read my books after they are published. Heavens no! I have already
read it 5-6 times by then! Maybe more!
And
then there are the physical problems from sitting far too long. I am
notorious for not getting up when I should. With my latest book,
SHADOW TRAIL, I sat 12-18 hours for 3-4 days in a row trying to get
the final version ready sooner than later because I promised my
readers they would be able to get the book by a certain date. I sat
so long that my left leg swelled beyond the capacity of the skin to
hold all that water and fluid was oozing out through the pores of my
lower leg. I learned my lesson on this one and decided I MUST GET UP
AND WALK AROUND AND STRETCH, ETC., much more often when writing! No
due date is worth your health.
Personal
family problems also intervened. Believe me, trying to write with
heavy personal emotions and worries going on is no picnic.
So
… easy? No, writing is not easy. You had better be born to write
and be very devoted to your stories and their characters. It had all
better be very real for you, so real that you cry when the characters
cry, and laugh when they laugh. They should be so real that you
forget about all the rules of writing and all the “how-to’s”
and you just write from the heart … and from the soul … not
caring about all the advice and suggestions for “How” to write
and what you can and cannot use or say.
Lucrative?
No. Most writers don’t make enough to live on, or they make an
average income they would make at a regular job, making the writing
simply very nice “extra” income. Those who make it big and become
famous and have movies made from their books are few and far between.
IT
IS HARD
WORK!
So I hope when you read someone’s book, you don’t read it with an
attitude of finding out what is wrong with it so you can criticize it
on Amazon. I hope you read it with an appreciation for how hard that
author worked to get that book out and available for you to read for
your personal entertainment. I hope you enjoy the story for what it
is, and because the author wants you to enjoy it. An author can’t
get enough “thank-you’s.” Your suggestions are always welcome,
but you should never be mean about it. Everyone’s opinions and the
way they “see” life is different, which is only food for more
stories. If we were all the same, there would be no need for writing
stories about “people” at all.
I
worked very, very hard on SHADOW TRAIL – harder than I ever have
worked on any other book, and probably because of personal emotional
things that were going on and physical problems I had that have never
happened before. I am, after all, getting old (hate to admit it!) and
have been doing this for 45 years (published 40 years in May 2023).
It has been a long, long road that would take another book to write
about.
Suffice
it to say, I LOVE TO WRITE. I LOVE MY CHARACTERS. They are extremely
real to me, and sometimes I feel like I might meet them when I leave
this world and go to the next. I believe some of them really existed.
Jake Harkner, the main character in my Outlaw Hearts series, is a
very complicated man due to an abusive childhood. I love the
psychological makeup of this man, and I understand him right to his
soul. I live with my characters. I talk with them. I love them and I
visualize them as real people who really lived.
I
hope you enjoy SHADOW TRAIL, book #6 in my Outlaw Hearts family saga.
After all that hard work and all the changes I ended up going through
with the story, the book has finally been published – August 12,
2023, Amazon. And I am already working on my “next” story, titled
IF I LOVED YOU.
Enjoy!!
Order Shadow Trail on Amazon