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| THE SINGLE DAD'S REDEMPTION |
The guest blog
theme this month is about working as an author with difficulties that can make
writing truly challenging. I am so in awe of the amazing authors blogging on
this topic, who have managed to overcome great obstacles to become prolific,
wonderful writers--and very successfully, too. I would be terribly presumptuous to say that my
own experiences even hold a candle to theirs, but I’m going to share with you some of the more transient times when life can get in the way, for any of
us.
When you
start out wanting to be an author, you have no deadlines. No pressure. You can take a year or two or
three to write those first few chapters, while polishing every word until you
think it gleams like the finest gem. Eventually, if you work hard and never,
ever give up your dreams, open your heart to honest criticism and then go back
and work even harder, those dreams may come true.
And then
everything changes. No endless
dawdling. You have an editor! Deadlines!
And you learn that it’s absolutely imperative that you make every single
deadline with professionalism. To make life difficult for your editors, who are
often overworked and who have tight deadlines of their own, can mean losing
your slot in the publisher’s line-up and perhaps, losing a chance for future
contracts.
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| A LONDON CHRISTMAS |
Being a very Type A person, I
accepted all of that with steely determination...but life happens. Family illnesses,
deaths. Moving. Job changes. Births, raising kids.
For
instance, on a day when I had one of those tight deadlines—with a lot of pages
to write and less than two weeks to do them--I spied a spider. Not just any old spider—a big, black, hairy
creature, surely the size of those big grapes sold at Christmastime. Wolf
spiders are especially creepy to me because they are so sentient—they clearly see me. Watch for my next move. Consider
their next move. Then they race for
cover. Which is fine if they are outside, but this behemoth was on the
workbench downstairs. Indoors. Which meant I’d be seeing him again soon and
he’d scare me all over again.
So...I
admit it. I love all other animals. Our
kids grew up having every possible pet rodent, lizard, and even snakes in the
house...one of which ended up with the stage name of Igor and appeared in my
first published novel.
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| WOLF SPIDER |
But I hate spiders,
and so on this day, I was mean. He
darted under the edge of a crumpled towel and I slammed my hand down—and promptly
discovered that under that towel wasn’t just a spider, there was a piece of
angle iron. I missed the spider (who was probably snickering as he headed to my
office for yet another surprise visit) and managed to break a bone in my hand.
I was so
stressed, worrying about finishing my book, that I didn’t want to go to the
doctor—much less accept that it needed a cast. But there it was anyway, by the end of the day—hot
pink and exactly what I didn’t need.
But....there’s
Dragon, I thought. Voila! The speech-to-text program for Macs had
been getting a little better with each new version, and surely that would work! It
did...for a couple days. Until I came
down with a cold...which swiftly moved into severe bronchitis, then pneumonia. With my asthma, simple colds often don’t stay
simple at all.
And then—I
got a severe case of laryngitis.
Whatever
Dragon’s wonderful capabilities, it could not read my thoughts, and that’s all
I had left for the final week of my deadline. And thus I had to awkwardly,
painstakingly, slowly type with my left hand.
With
several sleepless nights, I finally got that book done...but the experience did
teach me some lessons. Appreciate the
capabilities I (usually) have. Be kind
to all of God’s creatures—even spiders.
And never, ever let myself get behind on a deadline...just in case I do
something stupid again!
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| ROXANNE RUSTAND |
BIO:
Roxanne Rustand is an award-winning author of thirty romance and romantic suspense novels. She also contributed to the serial mystery, ORCHESTRATED MURDER (a trade paperback for Iowa Public Radio.) She now writes inspirational fiction, and is completely thrilled about this change in her career!
Out on their acreage, Roxanne and her husband have three horses, two border collie mixes (one adopted from a shelter–a sweetie named Elmo), and an abundance of barn cats who much prefer cat food to mice.
Roxanne would love to have you visit her website and blog at
