![]() ![]() It’s also filled with scenes where Sophie is stronger and braver than she’s ever been before. But mostly it came down to reminding myself that I had a job to do, and that I owed it to my fans, my editor, and myself to finish the book in time.Įven if it meant working through the hard days.Įven if it meant a lot of sleepless nights.Įven if it meant needing a final desperate extension on my deadline.Īnd while I do my best to keep myself out of the books (the Keeper series is about Sophie, after all-not me) I don’t think it’s a coincidence that LEGACY turned into a story about facing challenges with confidence and fighting to stay focused on the bigger picture when life keeps throwing out personal distractions. I wish I could say that I found some magical formula to get me through. I also scheduled lots of self-care time-something I’d always neglected before.Īnd slowly, with the help of old friends and new friends-and, of course family-the words started to flow.īut there were still lots of “I don’t want to do this” days. I never realized how healing and empowering exercise was until this year). (side note on that: the gym became my sanctuary. ![]() When I worried my overloaded brain was losing track of where I was at in the story, I’d listen to the audio versions of the previous books while I went to the gym. If I started to doubt my ideas for the plot, I sent my editor (who is truly a saint) long, rambly emails outlining the different possibilities-and her speedy replies were always thoughtful, enthusiastic, and supportive. Separate the obstacles into individual hurdles and climb my way over them one by one. The books in my series tend to be between 175,000-200,000 words, and writing one can feel like trying to sprint up a mountain, even under ideal circumstances. The short story had felt small and manageable, so my brain had been willing to take it on. I just needed to find the passion, confidence, and energy to dive back into the larger story.Īnd I decided that maybe the size of everything was throwing me off. Now I had proof that my creativity wasn’t broken. I even sent it to my editor, who was kind enough to read immediately and declare her love and excitement for it.* And yet, days later, I still had zero words.Īt that point, I started to fear my creativity was “broken.” But thankfully, a writer friend stepped in and invited me to join a retreat that she and her friends were doing, promising it would be half writing time, half group therapy.Īnd while I still left the retreat with zero words in Keeper #8, I did manage to write a short story from one of the other character’s POVs. Even posted about it on social media to hold myself accountable. So I tried setting an arbitrary “start-the-book” date. It sounds melodramatic, but I felt as blank as the new word doc I’d forced myself to create. And reading through my notes and idea journals was overwhelming. I told myself, “It’s good to be busy and lose myself in an imaginary world.”īut opening my laptop still felt exhausting.Īll my usual go to’s (music, art, books) tended to upset me. And the absolute last thing I felt like doing was writing. I owed my editor-and my readers-the next book in the Keeper series. And the chaos of finding new rhythms and routines to juggle all of my new responsibilities.īut through all of that there was a much bigger “this” looming over me-the worry that kept me up at night, staring at the dark ceiling. Then coming home to a house that was now half empty-and one hundred percent in disarray. The first “this” was the fifteen-city, almost entirely sold-out book tour I had to leave for a few hours later. ![]() Second-and more importantly: I remember thinking, “I need to survive this.” Which became the theme of my year. One: I finally understood why “you’d better sit down for this” is a cliché. And I only really remember two things about that conversation. I was zipping up my suitcase a little before midnight when my (now ex) husband came into the room to talk. I found out I was getting divorced November 5, 2018-the night before FLASHBACK (the seventh book in my Keeper of the Lost Cities series) released. ![]()
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