Juggling life to find time to write is difficult…
Well, I write ALL the time, so I guess I should qualify that by saying it’s difficult to find “time to write my own stuff”. As a ghost writer for a few clients, a part time job as a public relations/client support liaison, a husband and grandchildren to enjoy, I don’t have much free time to spare. However, I finally finished my first novel! Yay!
To be accurate, it is actually my third attempt at writing a novel. My first one was handwritten on pages and pages of notebook paper when I was fifteen. Unfortunately, I lost that at some point in my life. I guess that dates me, huh?
I wrote the second one another old fashioned way – using a typewriter and reams of paper. With great joy of having turned out 100,000+ words I sent a synopsis and sample chapters to 10 publishers – and got 10 rejections! Ouch. I buried the manuscript in the back of a closet and managed to get over the embarrassment and pain of rejection. I turned to nonfiction and ghostwriting for others.
Then fifteen years later we moved and the skeleton came out of the closet. There it was staring me in the face an accusatory frown on its unhappy brown face: the cardboard box of unloved work. My heart skipped a beat. Could I? Maybe I would. No. It didn’t work then – it won’t work now.
Why not? my inner voice pressed hard against my nervous twitch. At least open me up and read me again, the manuscript screamed at me. No, my common sense argued. Why suffer that embarrassment again?
Then my hand took on a mind of its own and reached into the box, pulling out the first manilla envelope. (I had loved the book so much back then that when I buried it I put each chapter into its own coffin!). With fear and trembling I opened up the manuscript and started reading the first lines.
OMGoodness! No wonder I was rejected! It was horrible. I blushed all over again and tried to put it away but my hand was still holding me hostage would not allow me to put the pages down. It made me read every single page.
And I’m glad I did.
Isn’t it funny how much you learn in fifteen years? Even though I stopped trying to write fiction I never stopped writing – and I got better at the craft. I read the story again with a critical eye and in spite of the horrible grammar and misspelled words (thank God for spell check!) the story concept was pretty good.
So I started writing fiction again.
At first I started rewriting the old story, but something inside my head kept wanting to try something new. Something different. Following my heart, I laid aside the manuscript (yes, I will go back to it) and started writing a new story. I finished a short story and then wrote another. Then another.
But by the time I got to that third short story I was ready to craft a story with more than 11,000 words. Lucy’s Angel was born. What a joy to write this book. It’s short for a novel with only 71,000+ words. However, with those words my love for writing was reborn. I always wanted to write fiction. And now I can say I am on the way.
The old axiom, it’s better late than never, is a good one I think.
I will share more about Lucy’s Angel in the next few days. If you love a good story about the supernatural – angels, demons and teenagers, then you will love Lucy’s Angel.
Please stay tuned!