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Have you ever felt like someone just ran over you with a semi, then pulled your brains out through your ears? That’s how it feels after a two-month marathon of writing and finishing a 622-page historical novel. You’ve heard those stories about people who, in matters of emergency and desperation, get a surge of adrenaline that helps them pick up a whole car to get someone out from under it. I think that’s what happens to a writer when she has a short deadline but a long book to write to meet that deadline.
I just finished the edits to my September book LOVE’S SWEET REVENGE. One thing I advise other writers is that before sending a book in to your publisher, if there is anything about it that bothers you, fix it first. Ninety-nine per cent of the time it’s that very part of the book that bothers you that will come back to you with editor comments and/or requests for changes. It’s usually nothing major, but you still want to kick yourself in the butt for not addressing your concern before letting your editor read the book. Well, I didn’t follow my own rule, and a couple of places in the book that nudged at me as not quite right are exactly the places where my editor made comments and requests for a few changes.
For my readers … I wrote this close to thirty years ago and thought it might interest you as to how much I love to write and how I managed to write sixty big, historical romances over the past thirty years:
I try so hard to write the best book I can write, and get so frustrated when I realize there are still so many millions of people out there who will never know about my books. I love writing so much, work so hard at it, but true success is always just out of reach. It’s so hard to keep going sometimes, amid the hurry and worry of everyday life; yet I cannot stop, even if I should end up a pauper, I cannot stop, because writing and the West are alive in me.
I live to write, and my spirit belongs to the West. It will never, never belong anyplace else. Someday the world will know this. I will make a name for my western writing. I will be famous for it. Perhaps God is only waiting for me to know this for sure – to know my destiny and never take it for granted, never think about the money or the fame, only about my destiny – my goals, my purpose for living, which is to WRITE – and to write about the West – only the American West. I desire nothing else, live for nothing else.
May God help me keep this spirit – keep the West alive in my mind and my heart even when I cannot be there. And may He remind me that I HAVE reached success, if only in the form of writing book after book and staying at the computer and doing what I love. If I can’t reach the whole world, I can at least reach hundreds, thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of readers and teach them about the great history of the American West, respect it, love it.
