Month: April 2013

I spent the morning (from about 8 until about 12) working on a novel synopsis that I plan to present to my editor. I’m hoping she will like it and buy it. I’m also hoping for a new roof for my house. Maybe I’ll get both. I might not get either. But, the hope that I might keeps me writing.

That, and the fact that I really love the characters and the historical period I am writing about. It’s Britannia during the turmoil of the Roman invasions when people are having to make tough choices about what freedom is, and what they are willing to sacrifice to have it.

I think writing is like the house you live in and the wand you make magic with in Harry Potter’s world.

It chooses you.

I didn’t set out to be a writer. But, since I was in the fourth grade and wrote the class play, I have always written. Plays, poems, the beginnings of diaries.

I feared I couldn’t finish a novel.

I feared I didn’t have what it takes.

Coming up with an idea for a novel is easy.

(I sometimes want to shake people who tell me the good idea they have that I should turn into a novel. I mean, I know they mean well, but it’s a little like handing a marathon runner a new pair of shoes and asking him to run the marathon for you.)

For me,  the hard part  in writing a novel is getting past about page 45 or 50. It’s getting through even after your cool new idea is no longer cool or new.

Novel writing is like running. It hurts for a long time, and then, suddenly, it doesn’t. And then it starts hurting again, but you go back to it day after day because you must.

If you don’t, you will hate yourself.

When you finish a day of writing, you feel good about yourself.

When you skip a day you feel guilt and make excuses: too many errands to run. Didn’t feel good. Kids needed me. And so on.

On the good writing days you have errands and kids, and you don’t feel good, but you still write.

That’s what you do because you are a writer, and writers write.

Right now, I’m working on my eighth novel. It hasn’t gotten much easier.

Having a good synopsis makes the writing  a little easier. It’s sort of like knowing where your mile markers are.

Writing a good synopsis is hard work. I’ve been working on this synopsis for about a week.

I usually write really fast, but the book this synopsis is based on has taken me four months so far, and I’m only at the 25,000 word mark. I’m hoping the synopsis will help me find my way. And help sell the book.

Sometimes I think I should ditch the novel and start a new one. I have a synopsis for a new one. But, I really like this story. I like my characters. I like the historical period.

So why is it taking me so long to write?

I don’t know.

What I do know is this: I’m glad that day after day, writing chooses me.

 

It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is,

 is the place you will most want to be, and end up being

Matthew 6:21 (The Message)

I remember reading the story of Eli and Samuel when my children were small.  I was very put out with these two supposedly wise men for not being better disciplinarians.

Seriously, I thought, the Bible is very clear: “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”  Proverbs 22:6

I disciplined my children because I love them.

The pay off for all these years of good, loving discipline supported by psychology, my best friends and my parents was supposed to be this:  teenagers and young adults who did what they were supposed to do.

My own teenagers acted like, well, teenagers.

Making my teenagers do what I wanted them to do was sort of like opening up a feather pillow, letting the feathers fly in the wind, and then trying to capture them and put them back in the pillow.

I ran around chasing a lot of feathers.

I was a little hurt it hadn’t all turned out the way I wanted.

My children had become my treasures. I cared more about their love for me than I did about God’s love for me.

What a burden that was for them, and how it stunted my spiritual life.

I grew a little when I read Matthew’s verse out of The Message.

When I began focusing on how I was doing with God rather than how my nearly grown children were doing with me, I grew a little more.