The Lucky Writer by Liz Flaherty

I was thinking tonight about how lucky I've been as a writer. I opened this blog up on my laptop and found the greatest gift of all--the blank page. I didn't have any ideas about what to write, but I wasn't too upset about that because that blank page is just the most wonderful challenge. 

 

There has always been a blank page. 

I remember knowing I needed my own space to write. I knew it because I read it in RWR, the professional journal of RWA, and Writer's Digest, and probably The Writer, too, although I didn't read it as often. So I found or made spaces. At the dining room table, in the room I shared with the ironing board, in the half-full room of a kid gone to college. When I retired, my husband and sons built me a room in the detached garage that has been the greatest gift of retirement. Because they were right, those articles that said you need a dedicated space.

 

I've always had a dedicated space. 

When I started, the internet was still in its gestational period, and living in the country, I didn't make friends with it until it was at least a toddler. So I had a ton of reference books and a good shelf to keep them on. Although they were usually on my desk or stacked beside it. You needed good reference books or else you needed to work in the library all the time. Most of us didn't have laptops right away, nor were there computers for public use at the time, so working at the library didn't make a lot of sense. I wrote my only historical romance by borrowing research materials over and over and over, though. A friend photocopied everything she needed, because she couldn't take the books home. 

Regardless of the manner in which I got them, I always had reference and research materials. 

Since the beginning, I've enjoyed the company of other writers, whether it was in RWA, on scheduled retreats, or on mailing lists. They were and remain some of the best friends I've ever had. We laugh, we complain, and we share. We confide, we drink, we cry, and we share some more. 

I've always had writer friends.

I remember in the early years of being published, I yearned to be asked to take part in an anthology. Or a boxed set. Eventually, I was, and most of the experiences have been so much fun. As a person who writes short anyway, novellas are extra fun. Being part of the Christmas Town series earned me the "USA Today Bestselling Author" notation on the front of every book I've written.

I was so lucky to be asked. 

In the beginning, I thought if I could sell just one book, it would be like getting a job. My first book would go so well that I'd never again have to fight the battle of rejection letters, where I'd run on light feet up the mountain of hope from a personal reply and just as quickly sink into the depths of despair over a form letter saying my work didn't fit the publisher's needs. 

That wasn't how it worked. That's never been how it worked. I wrote this woe is me soliloquy in September of 2020, one of the many times that serious thoughts of quitting fell onto that blank page. 

So, what's lucky about that?

The fact that I never did quit. 

I sighed a lot. Oh, a lot. And I think I probably cried a few times, too, alone in my dedicated space. Because while I didn't necessarily want to be Nora Roberts, I'd have loved to have been able to make a living writing. 

I never have, but we went to Ireland. We go out to dinner. My friend Nan Reinhardt and I go on writing trips. Most years, I earn more than I spend. But not always. Especially now, when the bulk of promotion costs come out of the writer's pocket even in traditional publishing. Many days it is, I admit, harder to hang onto my "Lucky Writer" hat. 

But I'm still here in my dedicated space with the blank page in front of me. The internet, although it still slows down and occasionally quits altogether here in the cornfields, is the best reference tool imaginable. It's also a way to be in constant touch with other writers. I start each day knowing I get to write. 

Every Single Day. Oh, yes, I am the luckiest of writers.