KEEPING HOPE ALIVE
Well I have finally reached the half way point in my latest novel Keeping Hope Alive. It seems to have taken forever for me to reach this part of the story.
I mean, I have the end.. I have the beginning. My task has been to fill in about 240 pages that I have been stressing over now for almost a year.
My first novel A Child Is Torn came so easy. I had a dream, I woke up in the middle of the night and poof.. three months later I had finished a complete novel. It was as if my fingers had their own source of energy and they were typing without my help at all.
Now Faceless: a Mystery took a bit longer. I can contribute that to the fact I wanted to do better. I was learning a craft and didn't want to make the same mistakes as I made in my first story. Then came Stolen, again, it took a bit longer and I was beginning to hate the process.
The marketing, the editing , the rereading the story over and over and over again looking for inconsistencies and spelling mistakes made me crazy. I was turning into one of my characters and not the law abiding ones either. I was turning into a flaming sociopath and was ready to kill anyone who asked me when the next book would be ready.
So many times I wished I could just stop writing. Just stop. I mean, I'm retired. I don't need the aggravation or the pain. ( The constant movement of typing caused a tear in my elbow tendon and I had to have surgery causing another delay.)
But there was a story there and I promised my readers. So I keep on going. So when I am not playing Candy Crush so I can zone out or watching the crazy political primary I will get inspiration and write another page or two.
And the crazier the politicians get, the sicker my characters get. The more evil their deeds. So I suppose it's a gift. But I swear, if Donald Trump becomes the president of the U.S. I am going to kill off everyone's favorite characters and never write again!!
