Sighs and Stepping Stones by Liz Flaherty

I wrote this post for the Romance Gems blog several years back. I hope you don't mind a re-run. 

Sometimes the goofiest things will give you something to start with. My friend Nan Reinhardt and her husband sold the house they lived in for 35 years. The whole process was...interesting. In the same way having a colonoscopy is interesting. So, anyway, we were talking one morning when one more obstacle was out of the path. I said something about "big sigh," as in relief, and she said it was too soon for that. I said--get prepared for something profound here; it doesn't happen to me very often-- "Every stepping stone deserves its own sigh."

When it comes to books, I don't write fast--ever--anymore. Yesterday I had 600words and called it good. A few days back, I think I had 26. Occasionally I'll get five-to-seven pages in a day and just burst with pride in myself. As someone who used to have 50-page weekends when I worked full time at the day job, this slowing down was hard to accept. I have wondered (and whined about) if it's time to put my novelist shingle in mothballs and stick to my beloved column and blogging.

Like all stepping stones, the ones in a writing career are hard and have a lot of distance between them. They have sharp corners, slick spots, and you stand a good chance of tumbling off into the water when you're only halfway across.

So you stick on Band-Aids, you take care on the slick spots, and you climb back out of the water and keep on walking. You're careful on your journey for a while then. You might try writing to market, to trends, to make your lyrics match the tunes of certain publishers. You skip around between sub-genres, although your heart usually leads you back to the one it lays the greatest claim to. You obsess over covers. Over reviews. Over promotion, promotion, promotion.

But then the day comes when you start that wondering-and-whining thing I mentioned up there. You've written 26 words in too many hours and they're not even particularly good ones. If, like me, you're a person who's always been proud of being productive, it's excruciating to realize that sometimes you're just...not.

I still wonder if it's time, but with the wondering comes a realization.

The thought of not writing books anymore makes me unhappy.

So I've given up being careful on the steps, no longer worried about splashes or sharp edges. Someone doesn't like protagonists in their 40s? Too bad for them. I'm not crazy about my cover? It's okay--I'll like the next one. People are tired of small-town stories? I'm not. My writing's too erotic, too sweet, my prose too purple or too terse, my POV stiffly pure or a little sloppy? Get over it and find another author, but thanks for trying one of my books.

Of course, there's a gasper, too, even in the middle of my hear-me-roar treatise on freedom: I don't have a contract right this minute and I'm a mostly-trad author who doesn't care to go mostly-indie. I'm afraid I'll never publish another book. However, if I'm honest about it, it's exactly like when I get to that spot in the middle of a manuscript where I know I'll never be able to finish the book. It happens every time. (Added in 2022: I DO have a contract now, with Magnolia Blossom Publishing, and am happy for it. However, that does nothing to change the fears in this paragraph, so I left it.)

More stones in the path. Occasionally, I think I can see the other side, but I'll never get there. There are a bunch of old sayings about journeys and destinations, but we all know writing is all journey. We know that, while finishing the books and having them published are wonderful things, it's the writing that counts. It's what makes us happy. One stone, one step, one sigh at a time.

***

Life's Too Short for White Walls will be an April 20 release from The Wild Rose Press. No preorder yet, but there are some free copies still available on Booksprout. (Jonesing for reviews--that's what we do!)