Dear Readers, Friends, Followers, Fellow bloggers,
For a long time I’ve wanted to sit down and actually write. Not just dash off short blog posts and stories, but buckle down and finish various longer projects I’ve started through the years. Trouble is, I’ve been getting stuck in deep ruts. Hitting mental road blocks that crack my windscreen, as it were.
The Bruiser Twins got on my case. Have you heard of them? Why bother? and Who cares? pipe up often to drench my inspiration. I hear the nagging, “You’re lousy at marketing,” and “Nobody wants to read your stuff anyway.” I just have to look on Amazon to see the kind of books that are selling like hotcakes now, but will anyone read the tame (lame?) stories I write? Thankfully, though, I was recently cheered by a letter from a friend afar who said, “I really like your stories.”
I like to write contemporary fiction, but those who know me personally will understand that many times I feel like I’m caught between two quite different worlds. The non-religious society I grew up in has moved quite far along in the new morality since I left and I’m rather out of date. I don’t care for today’s “flawed anti-heroes.” The conservative Christian circle I belong to tends to prefer the golden oldies-style that I’m not very interested in writing.
Mulling this all over yesterday I had a liberating “Eureka” moment. A little voice saying, “You need to finish these projects for yourself, for your own good. Time to stop floundering in what others might want or be buying.”
The chorus of a long-ago song comes to mind, and maybe the message has some validity:
“It’s alright now. I learned my lesson well,
you can’t please everyone so you got to please yourself.”
So I’m going to be SELFISH for the rest of the week and spend my time doing something that will please ME. I’m going to act like a real novelist, whack away at my story into the wee hours, live on fried eggs and toast, drink coffee ’til I’m bleary-eyed — and get something done. Wish me inspiration. 🙂
Meanwhile, I’ll post a few more book reviews here, so you can read about other writers’ works that I think are worth reading.
Christine's Collection 