Okay, now to writing - I’m nearly 19K into Standoff (paranormal suspense and the last of a series and end to a big story arc) and happy with where I’m heading. The heroine, Grace, is a doctor but she’s not mouthy and tough on the exterior like Nina or Tracy. So I have to rein in my dialog impulses and nix the snarky on the outside. She’s strong of course, she’s Cade’s mate and she’s taken a huge risk to come to him. He realizes that but she’s got some stuff to deal with. She’s a scientist so her happy place is in a lab or with data and not necessarily with a lot of other people. It’s always a challenge to write every character and make them unique, make them as real as you can without essentially copying your base character again and again.

Sometimes beginning a new book can be daunting, sometimes it’s the middle or the end that make me insane. The last two projects I worked on were hard to start but once I hit a certain point, once I know my characters and where they need to journey to, things begin to ease in my head.

I don’t necessarily mean it becomes easy to write that journey, but what I mean is I know the map and feel confident about the waypoints if not the scenic markers of the route.

I remember thinking that at some point, it would get easier after I did it a few times. In some ways, it does. I know more now about how to heighten tension with a few sentences here and there. I know how to edit better, I know things that make me a better writer in a technical sense. But at the same time, the knowing means I feel more pressure to use all those tools to the best of my ability to write a book.

Each day I learn and grow. Each day I fail and succeed. Hopefully, the success will outweigh the failure. But in the end, it’s what I do, how I do it and that I continue forward.

I sold my first book three years ago this month. At the time, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. None. I knew nothing about the publishing business. Nothing about the industry. Nothing about promotion or plotting. Phrases like “deep POV” and “limited third person” weren’t part of my lexicon.

I was on bed rest with a surprise pregnancy and wrote a book. Several months after the baby was born I sold the book and what a ride it’s been since then.

One thing has been a constant from then to now – I treat writing like it’s my job. Now, I use job in basic terms. I’ve had jobs, jobs I hated but had to do to pay the bills. Writing isn’t working at Swenson’s and getting carpal tunnel from scooping ice cream all day, it’s not working in a coal mine. It’s a pretty damned cool gig and I’m thankful for it every day.

What I mean is, it’s what I do. Every day. It’s not a hobby. It’s not something I do only when I’m in the mood. Even when I’m blocked, when I hit that point in the story where I’m convinced it totally sucks, even when every word is like the worst job I ever had (cleaning toilets when I was in junior high with my mom at nights and on weekends).

Do I want to quit sometimes? Honestly? Yes. There are days, usually those days when I hear from my agent I’ve been rejected or when I’ve been waaaaaaaaaiting to hear back from someone who’s had my manuscript forever and a day and I feel like it’s never going to happen.

Do I quit? No. Because I know what it feels like to finish a book. I know what it feels like to muster up the courage to show it to people who’ll crit it. I know what it feels like to revise and revise again. I know the agony that is a synopsis and I know the feeling of fear followed by elation when something is submitted somewhere. Then there’s the pain of rejection and the joy of acceptance and contract. Honing through edits and revision and at last, the incomparable feeling when your book releases. Seeing it on a screen or holding it in my hands. Hearing feedback from readers, positive and negative.

Writing can be the loneliest job ever. It can be a rollercoaster of frustration, joy, pain and desolation. There’s nothing like it in the world and if you give up, you’ll never get to that point where you’re standing in line at RT and someone sees your name and says, “Oh my god! I love your books!”

In the end, it’s simple. Put your butt in the seat or in your bed or wherever you write, put your fingers on the keyboard or on a pen and do it.