I have people ask me how I find time to do all the marketing involved with being an author and still get my books written.
Add in I’ve got a husband who likes some attention, four adult daughters who I love hanging around with, FOUR glorious grandchildren who NEED THEIR GRANDMA!!! A home to maintain and ten books releasing in 2016.
So how do I do it all? Here’s the answer.
I don’t.
When someone asks me how I balance everything I have to admit I am unbalanced. I believe there has been some paperwork filed with the County Attorney to that affect.
Writing isn’t something I find time for. Writing is my default activity. I have to be dragged away from my stories. It’s the rest of my life that I struggle with.
Writers write. That’s what we do. No one can sit alone for hours on end, having imaginary conversations with themselves….if they don’t love it.
When you talk with a writer who is harried and exhausted and under deadline she may worry about getting her book finished but that’s not because she doesn’t love writing, it’s because life intrudes on her book. She has to pull herself away and feed small children. Field emergency phone calls. Pay attention to her husband, very often the man supporting her while she works on her often poorly paying little hobby/job. Walk the whining dog.
And don’t even talk about marketing. It’s fun to write blog posts.
I’m having a really good time right now. It’s writing, of course it’s fun. But it takes time. It takes creative energy. And that book is always whispering to you, alive in the back of your head ‘come back. You left your heroine hanging on a cliff by her fingernails. You left your hero heartbroken, but too macho to admit he loves the heroine. You left a villain who needs to be arrested and shot and beaten with a big stick.
If the world would just leave a writer alone there would be only peace and harmony (for her at least, heaven help the kids and husband and dog).
I have people say to me A LOT ‘I think I have a book in me.’ Or sometimes, ‘I’ve always wanted to write a book.’
I always say, “You know, write if you have the desire but don’t feel bad if you never get that book written. Sitting alone hour after hour makin’ stuff up isn’t a very normal way to conduct your life and most people just can’t do it. They like human interaction, they like talking to REAL people. They like MOVING.
I tell heartbroken, cruelly rejected authors that if they can’t take the pain then GET OUT. Go do something else. The money is probably better in a career that includes the words, “You want fries with that?”
For the most part, writers can’t stop. The pain and rejection and public humiliation (I’m thinking of One Star Amazon Reviews here) would stop any writer if they could be stopped.
But there is peace in knowing this is how God made me. We just have to accept that. Embrace who we are. Live an unbalanced life with joy—since you can’t stop anyway.
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| Runaway Bride |
Runaway Bride
A Kincaid Brides/Trouble in Texas Novella
1870s Texas
Big John Conroy is a Texas Ranger asked by a friend to assist Carrie. He catches up to Carrie and her brother Isaac and races away from a dangerous man who will stop at nothing to make the beautiful young woman his wife. Soon Big John's feelings for Carrie turn to more than simply protective, and Carrie finally feels that she's in the presence of a man she can respect--something she's never known. Fans of Mary's The Kincaid Brides and Trouble in Texas series will enjoy catching up with those characters.
