To Write, or Not To write...

Well, that's the question posed by a few writers. I've been down that road a few times. Early on, when I was in my twenties, and later in my forties, I got away from writing, for whatever the reason. Sometimes it was frustration. Back in the day your only hope was to get a publisher or agent to take you on. Now, we have people writing books so damned fast, they put out maybe as many as twenty or thirty in a year. I'm thinking they must have a set formula, or maybe a fancy writing disk, pop in names and boom, they have a book. I don't know. But Amazon is chock full of ebooks, and some are free. (I have a problem with giving away my writing, unless it's a short story, because my time and talent as a writer I consider worth something!)

I've been writing since the beginning of time (for me that was high school in 1971). Those times I told you I quit writing, well, guess what? I went back to it. Tried a different book, like a mystery or something. I would have to say, I was practicing writing. I was learning how to write, all those years. And you still learn even after you've published.

I don't write fast, unless a book hits me, and I can write it straight through. I did that on one book, and that was the fourth of the Sabrina Strong series, Caprice. I wrote that in just over three months. Yeah, that's probably the quickest book I've ever written, but also, that was a first draft. I go over my books to edit several times, I think it took me two years before I had it ready to be published. I don't hand them to an editor--I don't have that sort of money to invest. And until I got on with my new publisher, Creativia, I was having to depend upon people to read it through for me and find mistakes I would have missed. And after that I read it through two more times to make sure I haven't missed anything.

Up until last year, I wrote whenever I had free time. Then, I had some time off in the summer. I had a lot of energy, and wanted to do some major gardening things, and do some long walks to keep my energy up. I realized I wasn't enjoying life itself. I felt that turning 60, I needed to stop and smell the roses. I needed to just enjoy other things. One of my other passions became crocheting. I also enjoy reading a book. I like to hold a book in my hand--I'm finding a lot of people who would rather read a book, not an ebook, so I'm happy to have gone with a new publisher who can deliver a paperback version of my book to anyone in the world. I simply didn't have the savvy, patience, or the $$ to do it.

When it comes down to writing, I write because I CAN'T NOT WRITE. For those who simply write thinking they can make money, well phooey on them. I'm not saying I don't have dreams beyond all reason that I could make money, but after so many decades of not really doing that, I'm at the point where I'm just writing, and if I make a little money (even only $100/year), it's at least something I can take to the bank.

When I get an idea/ideas for a book, I keep notes on it, either in a document on the computer or on paper. I like a paper trail myself. At the moment, I'm trying to work on a mystery. It's a bit different writing. Everyone I've ever heard about how to write one says you come up with the murder, and write backwards. I don't know how to do that, but I understand the concept. You have to know who/how/what and come up with your suspects, but you alone know who murdered the victim, and with what, and then you plant all these clues, throw in a Red Herring, and you've got your story.

Well, I'm writing it the way I always write. I'll know who/what/how/when, when I get to it. Once I get to that point, I'll be able to throw in all those other things. I write assbackwards, anyway.

So, I guess for me, it's impossible to not write, but I'm doing less time in the old chair, and trying to do other things, too. Sort of like semi-retired, but never retired.

How about you? Do you ever need a break? Are life's crazy events keeping you from writing, and you're wondering if you'll ever be able to continue writing? Wonder if you should just take a long break from it, but worry if you do, you'll never be able to pick up the pen again?

Here is Shelly Arkon's take on this subject at her vlog. I love her vlogs, and Hair Ball, her dog is so sweet.

Hope you have a good week!

The Million Miles Award & Ten Million Words Award

August is slowly heralding the later stages of summer, this is the last week that some people might be able to go off and do something before summer ends and school begins. For some it's a chaotic time, others they feel a rush to enjoy what they feel they've missed all summer—whatever that may be.

Going back to Fall semester driving for Huskie Line/NIU, for me, is just another day, except I'll be driving only 4 hours, and not 6. Plus my husband will be with me—my partner in life & best friend. I've got a Baby-Boomer birthday coming up next week... I'll only say I've got one more year to be fifty-something, and then I'm looking at how I'll get through to retirement without going absolutely bananas—no, not my age, age has nothing to do with my panic— about finding something less stressful to do, while I ease into the retirement age, and yet make some money.

I've been with this company for 14 years. When we went to our bid meeting last week I knew they were going to give an award to at least one of our drivers who had been there for some time—longer than me—but I thought, yeah, maybe I'll get something too. No one told me that was going to happen, it was my precognition working. I was right. The top 3 people who had been there longest got the Million Miles Award (I am third in seniority). This was not only how long we'd been driving, but driving without any accidents. Going accident free where people who walk in front of your bus, drive like lunatics, and people on bikes or skateboards believe they are made of rubber, you wouldn't think it possible to not have something bad happen. So many people milling around on a college campus with 16 buses driving around is recipe for disaster—you would think. But Huskie Line has never hit a pedestrian since they started up in 1971. Having been driving a 12 ton bus for so long, several hours in the day, I see lots of opportunities where someone should have been in a crash (I'm not involved, but others are), but it was narrowly avoided and I don't know how. I've had this crazy notion that my being there using some sort of psychokinesis powers can only explain how someone missed another in such a near miss (sort like Samantha Stevens in Bewitched ). I've had times where someone has actually ran stop lights and signs and stopped in time to not hit my bus, or I, having known something might happen, kept from moving the bus into the line of its trajectory. You get this wonderment inside you, and think, yeah that could have happened, but it didn't. When I'm out there on the busy 4-lane, having to change lanes, I've got nerves of steel, I'm in a zone where I know exactly where my bus is at all times, and where the cars around me are—I call it the “Zen of Driving a Bus”--and have eased that 32 footer in between two cars perfectly, and have had someone suddenly break and make a crazy-ass move right in front of me and I dodge them with some sort of mysterious buffer zone. No panic, like I said. Just nerves of steel.

The achievement in driving a bus for that long w/o an accident was nice. I just framed the certificate—which is made of very thick fancy paper and has my name on there, plus we all got a bronze belt buckle proclaiming the same with our name and so forth on it. Awards like this come along once in a lifetime when you work somewhere for a long time (GAK!). Ah, if only I had a quarter for every dang mile, I'd be able to retire, easily, in a few years.

In the writing world, there are no awards handed out. Sometimes you get great reviews, and that feels good. But in what you accomplish as a writer, you almost have to invent an award to yourself. How many words you think you've written in your life time? Writing mss. over and over counts too. Back in the day you had to begin at the beginning the rewrite. It's not like that today with the computer where you can change whole lines and take out whole sections, and you still have a mss. in tact more or less.

I began writing way back in 1971. During my college years I wrote like a crazy person—usually by hand, and only once I had the first draft did I type it. I remember hauling all my writing from the 20 years I lived at home from my father's house—hundreds of pages stacked up inside 3 paper grocery bags—I'm not a math expert, but if typed, usually a page held around 300 words at an average. I'm not sure but those bags would have easily held 1,000 pages or maybe 3,000 pages, I don't know. I should have figured it all out. But in the 40 years I've been writing now, I'm sure I've written about 10million words easily. If I were able to do up an award certificate for myself I think that's what I would call it.

Since publishing was impossible for me, I can say how many books I should have had under my belt, but it would have been twenty, easily. My publisher (Sabrina Strong Series), has quit the business, and so now I'm going Indie. It's just as well, since I had found a lot of mistakes in the last book he published, (Vampire Nocturne) including placing the wrong title on the binding of the paperback. I've sold the last three copies this weekend to relatives—telling them that's a real collector's copy with the booboo on the spine. I've yet to get the document read over, make any corrections I need, and send it off to my formatting man, John GillJohn Gill. I'm very lucky to have been able to hold on to all my book's covers.

This summer has had me working forward two steps and having to take five back. When I thought I would have just had to deal with 2 books, I'm dealing with 5! I've had so little time to do much, but I made time to enjoy my summer. I've taken walks, I've sat and watched TV or movies with my husband, and I sit and read a book in the evening. I decided very little will be accomplished this year, I don't even know if I'll get the 4^th book in the Sabrina Strong Series out before the end of the year as there's just too much to do with it and I'm still working on these other books that I've got to get out on my own.

Maybe we, as writers, all need to consider how long we've been at this writing stuff and pat ourselves on the back. I'm not expecting to make any serious money with anything I write. I don't know what will be accomplished there—probably nothing. But I can't stop writing. And if I can continue to put it out there on my own, I will into the next 20 years or so I can still do this. I'll probably slow down some, but I figure the next 4 books in the Sabrina Strong Series are written. I've also got a sequel for Spell of the Black Unicorn—called Spell of Dark Castle written, but I don't have time to work on it right now. I've had my niece ask me about the sequel, and that was a nice thing to know that someone is looking forward to reading it. If someone's willing to read my work, that's all I care. I spent those first many years not having the opportunity to have anyone want to read it, or publish it, but now that I can, I'll do so.

Cat Agents & Me

I have to admit I've been in a funk (That's F-U-N-K, for all you  wisenhimers out there) for the past couple of months. My finances have been in the toilet lately, which is like worse than just tight. I'm now (husband included, bc we both work at same place) are laid off for 2 weeks. Christmas is not gonna happen in this house. It has been years since we put up a tree. Usually we've waited until the after Chirstmas sales to buy anything. Not this year.

Before I get someone to play the violin and get a weeping clown in here, I don't want anyone to leave a "you poor schmuck" message. This was going to be an up-beat post. And it will be. I promise. Just indulge me a little further if you will, this has a happy ending... sorta.


For the longest time I thought agents were human and come to find out they are not. I tried to get one for maybe a dozen years. Each time I wound up crying for about 4 days and then I quit querying all together. You can't keep on getting your face bashed in and like it and want to do it all over again. (and sure they say it's not personal, but seriously, it feels personal).


And this was me for aprox. 30 years of trying to get somewhere. I eventually began publishing in a small market, and I mean small, but I got paid $10 or so for things I sent in to a sweet lady editor of what was known as Weeds Corner magazine. It helped me get over the feeling I was a lousy writer. I had my first poem published with them, and everything I sent to them after that for 4 years.

I have been writing novels for my whole adult life--let's go with more than 35 years. That's a long time to keep trying to sell a novel--to ANYONE. I've seen publishers fade. I've known other writers around me being published and thought one day I'd be scooping up a book deal.



When I finished my first novel in the Sabrina Strong Series--yet again--I began looking around. I thought I had a publisher, only to find out they were going to charge an arm, leg, my left eye and my first born to edit it. I said no thank you (scumbag). I went to an ebook publisher which I won't name, and thought they were interested only to have the editor give me the runaround as to whether she wanted the rest of the book or not (for 3 months). At this point my Internet went out, and I never did find out if she ever answered my last email... I'm pretty sure she didn't.

Then I posted my first chapter on an author site I used to belong to, and someone responded. This someone happened to be a publisher. And ta-da, he became my present publisher, Wlfired Voss of Copperhill Media. I didn't know how this would play out. I mean I read their contract and could find nothing in it that gave me pause, and so I signed. I didn't get an advance, this is not one of your BIG 6... or 8 or whatever it was in 2009-2010. They were small, but they would take care of everything, right down to the cover and edits.

By this time I had already self-published my Spell of the Black Unicorn book. I'd paid $400, but couldn't go through that again just to get something else published (for what those other creeps were going to charge, I could have had five books published by them). At this time we didn't see a lot of people putting any faith in those people who'd self-published (wow has times changed). Only a lucky few got "discovered" by agents or publishers. Well, that didn't happen to me, and it really doesn't happen to a whole lot of people either.

But I did find out that people loved what I wrote. I got a taste of what it was like to have a book signing, have my very first physical copy of my own book in my hands and got to snot all over myself with happy tears. I did what I had been trying to do all my life, and I should not shove that all under the rug like it doesn't matter. It matters, and I have to remember how it felt before the publisher, and after.

To me having my work out there, I realized just yesterday, was something I had wanted for a very, VERY long time. I would have sold my soul to the same devil that Steve Jobs did, but he never did show up at my door. So, here I was sitting at my computer working on the edits of my 5th novel in series, waiting for the edits from my publisher, knowing that at some point next year I would have a third book out and had to plunk myself in the head and say "You stupid dummy! Look at where you were and where you are now!"

The Good News:
I'm working on the next two novels, have at least three out, and have 3 short stories out and hope to turn SOTBU into an ebook so that more people can enjoy it, because I had a lot of fun writing it. Ten years ago I couldn't say that. I can now. I can also say I DID NOT GIVE UP! That says a lot about the character of someone who had a dream, and didn't give up no matter how impossible it looked.

So, I'm not exactly rolling in the bucks having three novels out right now, but I have three novels out right now with the third in my series pending. Am I happy? Sure. I'm happy where I am. Do I want more. Damn tooten I do. But I should just keep on taking baby steps.

Just as a side note, I don't work the Internet like a goon until my fingers fall off and bug everyone to buy-buy-buy my books, because that's annoying as hell to me, so I'm sure it is to eveyone else. I really don't have time to toot my horn all that much. I've got writing to do and my publisher wants me to work on the novels instead of trying to push the book like a hopped up car salesman on a commercial.

So, I've had to realize that I have no control over people buying or not buying my books. I do know that when the 3rd one comes out the sales will jump. That's enough to make me smile and feel a sense of accomplishment, aside from all the stuff I've mentioned.

Until next time, my pretties!

Milestone~Forty Years of Writing!

I was digging around in a box of old writings I had--yep, kept stuff from way back--trying to find an older story, and didn't realize the germ of the idea was something I'd written in 1979, for a creative writing class I took in college. I graduated from high school in 1972, but I didn't get my 2 year degree until ten years later in 1982. This piece I had written in 2001, and tried to publish it--but got rejected. It's called "The Unholy Devil", it was a short story about Rasputin--one of my favorite historical figures.

I am a prolific writer, and when my father died, and I had to clean out things that I had left there from the 1970's thru the 1980's, I discovered whole drawers full of my writing. I brought back one box and 3 large paper bags filled with paper--all with my writing on it!

I had to get rid of most of it, some of it was pretty bad. I don't know how many pages this could have been. But piled up it would have probably reached my chin. Novels of my fantasies (non-stop, in the beginning written on Gregg lined notebooks) about the Beatles and me. Other fantasies that might be considered sci-fi, adventure, and LOTS of poetry.

I was an artist turned to a writer. (My 2 year degree is in art.) When I took a creative writing class in my senior year in high school, and took it again (with teacher's permission), I realized I could put down a story in writing much faster than my little cartoons. So, when I was near the end of my senior year (looking forward to not being in school), I told my English teacher that I wanted to become a writer/author. She told me that I would be better off doing something else because my spelling and grammar was terrible.

Can you imagine? She pointed this out, and thank you for that, but she said nothing about my writing abilities. So, in my last year of college I was pleased to see they had a creative writing course and I took it (because I did not quit writing just because someone told me I couldn't spell). Mind you, this was years later, and I had continued to write and tried to work on those areas of spelling etc.

The creative writing teacher in that college class was much kinder. He encouraged us all. Me too! I had a terrible time with teachers who chose to ignore me because they thought perhaps I was a lost cause. I couldn't learn. I had trouble. Duh! I'm dyslexic, come to find out (not until I turned 40, did I figure this out about me).

So, back to this piece I was scrounging around for (and my re-writing of it will probably publish/put up somewhere). Inside the file folder, with this typed up manuscript (2001), I found the ORIGINAL yellowed paper, typed up on two pages. I had dated it April 1979? (the question mark, because I wasn't sure). The title was Father Gregori. It was very different from the story which came from it, but my teacher very lightly circled misspelled words in red, made little notes where it was "good" and one where a line was "vague". At the end he wrote: "Good character sketch - clear conflict - I see this as one scene of a longer story - needs expansion so that the reader has time to develop certain attitudes and expectations"

I wish I could remember this teacher's name, but it escapes me now. He was a writer, as well as an English teacher. Soft-spoken, red hair, and I remember he had this way of wetting his finger to turn pages on the inside of his bottom lip. I remember after that year he was moving, his wife had some sort of military job and he was taking time off to write. He was published in various small publications--which he had given us addresses of and encouraged us all to try them. Which, of course, I did. My first piece was published in ByLine, which back then was not as tough to break into, and allowed people who were just starting out writing to be published. I remember being thrilled about it. I had a few other things published in ByLine over the years, but that first piece had lifted my hopes.

Aside from the writing classes, I did join a writing critique group in 1983-84. I learned much while there, saw one of our members get a contract with Zebra for her historical novel (which thrilled me beyond measure).
After that experience, I took time off from writing, but always had to come back to it. I could not stay away from it. When I did, I missed it. I realized something after a 4-year time away from it (while working on my crafts), that nothing else gave me the sense of accomplishment that writing did.

With that said, you must realize it has taken me all this time to have a novel accepted by a publisher. I joked that I would paper my walls with the rejections slips. When I reached my 40's it seemed like a string of dreams crashed every time I got a rejection slip! By age 50, I decided I'd had enough and would self-publish. The new age of Internet was what brought me around to this. But you still had to pay someone to do this. Now, anyone who has the ambition can publish a novel, short story, etc. How times have changed. I'm still not certain for the better. The jury is still out on this one, because a lot of bad writing is put out there, along with the good.

As for me, I need an editor. I may self-publish my original Spell of the Black Unicorn, again, which is back in my possession and I do want to re-work it and try and put it out on Amazon or somewhere. At this point, if I make a little money, it's fine. For the last 3 years I made $1.79 (not sure how that happened, as the book was for sale at $17.95) from that book, after having made all of my $400, and a little bit more that I had paid them.

So, maybe you could call me the writer who never gave up. I'm like Harry Potter--the boy who lived. I survived those decades, did not give up. I saw times when a writer could still approach a major publisher w/o an agent, and now, you need no agent, no publisher, if you don't wish to go through that headache and heartache.

So, you now know I do know the struggle of getting no where, spinning my wheels, coming up short and wanting to throw out my writing, and give up.

DON'T GIVE UP!!!
I sure didn't give up. I may have taken breaks, which allowed me to come back fresh and excited about it, and things keep on changing. For the better or for the worse, I don't know. I only wish I had had the chances some of you have now. You would wait months to get some manuscript back from either a publisher or an agent back then--only to have to try the next one. That was the only thing I gave up on--traditional publishers and agents.