Most excuses for not finding time to write are just that: excuses. If a writing career is really important to you, you will make time to write. If you write just one page a day, in a year you’ll have a completed book…
Starting in 1951, Elmore Leonard rose two hours early every day before going to his full-time job. In ten years of balancing dual careers, he published five Western novels-including…3:10 to Yuma…
Kimberly Raye, a two-time finalist for Romance Writer of America’s top award…wrote more than 20 books before she gave up her day job…
(From “Making Time to Write” by Cheryl Bolen, The Writer, December 2010, p. 26)
So there it is, Rene’, my loving and adorable wife: Vindication that, despite rising at 4:30am this morning to deal with dialogue thrashing around in my brain; a gift offered up by my new manuscript’s protagonist (a character who first appeared in Suomalaiset); I am not losing my mind.
Or maybe I am. But when Alexis Gustafson calls to me, tries to tell me what’s going on in her life in 1930s Karelia, I must respond. No matter the hour. As an artist, you understand. Right?
So forget, dear wife, the red ink, my perpetual irritability, and the fact that I’ve taken a second job teaching college kids to keep Cloquet River Press afloat. Please ignore the cartons of unsold copies of Uncle Willard’s biography sitting in a rented warehouse gathering dust. There is hope: Honest, dear, there is.
I can feel change in the wind.
Peace.
Mark
