Whew! Cords of doubt and a whirlwind of confusion wrapped their bony fingers around me and held my muse captive these last few months. In my naiveté I raced through self- help internet sites, writers groups and ordered books that cost a fortune in my quest to learn the craft of writing a novel. My long-time friend, Jeannie Barber www.jeanniebarber.com and I finally finished a collaborative work that’s taken us more than five years to complete. Thrilled to be finished and in child-like wonder; we began to try to find a place to shop our book.
Before I go on, please know that my family has been MORE than supportive, especially my daughter-in-law who is published and given me wonderful advice. She pulls no punches, tells it like it is, but with love! and I appreciate that.
You see, we’d gone to a writer’s conference where editors and publishers were in attendance and received much praise and accolades about our story. But then, we noticed along with their praise came the ‘suggestions’. One agent said she’d buy the book if we did this or did that to it. There were other suggestions and we decided to begin attending a writers group to help us with the editing. All of a sudden, the joy was beaten out of us with harsh criticism and unkind words. Didn’t we know about gerunds? You never use purple prose! And alas! The dreaded change of POV!!
We parted their company and a bit of our money for those eye-opening revelations.
Now, the criticisms for the most part were correct, of course. It was the way it had been handled that was so hurtful. So, with our tails between our legs, we began to research and learn the correct way to pen a novel. Thank God for the internet! We joined a group on line and lurked for over a year and gobbled up all the bits and pieces of information we could find. And then…the editing began.
We were told to write it as non-fiction instead of fiction because it sells better. Now the events of our story are based on true life experiences, so we rolled up our sleeves and began anew. I believe it took about seven chapters until we both threw up our hands and gave up. We read some more, researched until our eyes fell out and decided to go back to our original work and give it an overhaul. That is where we are now.
Every Wednesday night and Saturday morning we get together and labor over our ‘baby’. We struggle and haggle and have brain freezes and memory loss! You see, when we were writing in our ignorance, we laughed and guffawed and rolled on the floor with joy and fun. No more…that’s gone. We both love writing and we’re both very creative people, so we wrote from the heart. A crowd would gather when we met at the Walmart lunch area and ‘create’. (We live in separate towns and would meet in between.) When the groups we submitted an excerpt to tore us to shreds, we nearly gave up.
But onward we’d go! We began again!
Now, I think we’ve found our way. We know where we are headed with this and it’s thanks to one new author we met at a book signing. Her name is Beth Fehlbaum www.bethfehlbaum.com and she wrote Courage in Patience. We were fortunate to travel to her book signing in Tyler, Texas and have an in depth conversation with this inspiring lady. She listened to our plight and scrunched up her nose and said, “Stop! Write from the heart, find YOUR voice. Be unique. Bring the joy back!”
The encouragement to us was the shot in the arm that we needed. If the story is compelling the editor will give you the direction to make it marketable. Just write it!
So Jeannie and I are back in the saddle, writing like fury and laughing again! The joy is back! So thanks Beth for your inspiration and insight. Whether we ever get published or not, we’ve learned there are people like you in this life who still believe in dreams and encourage that in others!
