I lay in bed, trying to go back to sleep, but my mind was just too busy with what I should write for my first blog here. There are so many subjects to explore, comment on, and people much more knowledgeable than I, posting about many things. Yet, I kept coming back to the idea of a writer’s journey, and since I’m new here, perhaps the best starting point is the moment I threw that romance book against the wall and declared, “I can write better than that!”
Well, as it happened, I could…and I couldn’t. I was expecting twins at the time, and two years later my fourth son, therefore it was still another six years before a plot dropped into my thoughts in the middle of making breakfast eggs for my four little boys. The first chance I found, I scribbled down that plot. I did a lot of that, scribbling down scenes as one drifted across my thoughts. My dining room table was littered with scraps of scenes.
I went to the library and hauled home an armload of books about the Yukon gold rush and I researched voraciously. And wrote by the seat-of-my pants at times. But oddly enough, the sub-conscious is always at work in the background, like a computer, sifting, sorting, compiling, imagining. I had action scenes, and those prompted a reaction. Soon, I had lots of those, like a broken string of pearls. Gradually I strung a few together, and then more and my pearl necklace started taking shape. And then spring was suddenly upon me—blue skies, sweet sunshine and boys eager to play outdoors--and I just as eager to join them.
Months passed. Dust collected on those pages, but that internal computer must have still been at work. Because one day in early November I realized the end of the year wasn’t far away. And hadn’t I told myself months earlier I would write and finish a book by the end of the year?
Two weeks later on a Saturday morning, at approximately noon, I finished typing The End. What a glorious feeling. I sat at my dining room table, grinning like a fool at my IBM Selectric—only to hear a little voice declare, “Mommy, we’re hungry.” And there stood my four little guys, with their Dad standing behind them, on the other side of the wrought iron “gates” that separates the dining room from our big kitchen area. They all wore the most woebegone faces, hanging a real guilt trip on me. Of course Doug was quite capable of feeding them, too, but it was lunch time after all. And I believe it was also my hubby’s birthday…I think. By mid-December, after another edit and retype, I packaged up my manuscript and sent it to Harlequin.
The turnaround was two months, so when the third month went by, I started getting my hopes up. The day after my birthday, a large manila envelope protruded from the mailbox. My heart sank. I opened it, read the rejection letter, and bawled. Then half an hour later or so, I got angry. After all my hard work I had to right to know why. So, I phoned Harlequin and asked for the editor-in-chief who’d signed the letter—and I was actually put through to her. Unheard of these days. She advised she hadn’t personally read my manuscript, and was on her way to a meeting, but she would look it up upon her return. And she did. The fact that she bothered making a long-distance to a person they were not contracting, spoke volumes, but I was too inexperienced to know that. Apparently, my manuscript went through two reads; both readers deemed my story was old-fashioned and needed tightening up.
Well, silly me…I thought, okay, the hero and heroine can go to bed first and then get married. But what did the editor mean by tightening up? Many months later I was at a writers’ conference in Calgary and was introduced to an executive with Harlequin Toronto. I told him my little experience with that editor-in-chief and that’s when I learned how close I had been to getting a contract. Had I known that old-fashioned had nothing to do with sex, but rather too formal dialogue and narrative (perfect sentences with subject, verb and a clause drilled into me by my high school English teacher) and far too many adverbs, etc., I would have revised that manuscript and sent it right back to Toronto.
Instead, I made the biggest mistake of my writing life—I put that book away and started another. Finished it. Put it away and started another. While I was working on my second book, I was selected for a week-long writers’ retreat in Edmonton where I met Judith Duncan, a romance writer with Harlequin Superromances. Bless her dear heart, Judith saw something in my writing and I learned so much from her--but I still did not edit and submit for fear of being rejected.
However, I did begin entering contests. And encountered disappointments many times: two judges would love my story and the third judge nitpicked my entry to death. I learned a valuable lesson from that, but eventually stopped wasting my money entering contests. Failing to final in a contest was crushing, but the critiques from the published judges, who could get past style and see the big picture, helped me believe in myself. I just needed the right editor.
I found that editor when I submitted twenty pages of Beneath A Horse-Thief Moon for a romance writers conference in Calgary where it won the Readers Choice Award. It also won me recognition from a Kensington editor. I had an appointment with her Sunday morning and prayed she’d ask for two chapters. She blew me away by requesting both books. Six months went by and I was getting very hopeful until her letter arrived. It’s the best rejection letter I’ve ever received. Her words gave me the courage to believe in myself and in my writing.
It was at this time that life once again intervened, as it had several times before. My mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and had, at the most, six months to live. There’s a Biblical saying I love about a time for everything, and this was the time to be with my mother. I spent every weekend with her and often left from work on Fridays to drive to my home town to be with her and leave early Monday morning to get to work. After she was gone, there was the worry of her home, packing everything up, trying to sell her house, worrying about it since I lived an hour away.
Then, when I finally found the interest to get back to my writing, a driver cut me off on the highway by swinging into my lane to make a wide turn left. I swerved around him, zigzagged across the highway and rolled my van while he blithely made his left turn and kept on going. I ended up in the hospital for eight days and lost all motivation to write.
Looking back on these years, I regret the wasted years of not writing. But are they really wasted? Yes, I wrote twelve books, on three different computers, and don’t even know if I can find the hard copies or disks for some of those books. But my internal computer still keeps on clicking away, researching, gathering information, learning and improving my writing. Characters start appearing, whispering in my ear. And dear, long-time internet friend, Jacquie Rogers, snapped her whip at my heels occasionally, never giving up on me until last year she goaded, actually flayed me to promise to do an edit and submit it to Prairie Rose Publications. As usual, I tried to procrastinate, but when I give my word—I cannot go back on it, so two days later I tackled editing three chapters and sent them to Cheryl Pierson. I could hardly believe my eyes when I read her e-mail, saying she loved it, wanted to read more and for me to submit the entire book. I sure didn’t need Jacquie’s whip after that, but hunkered down in the saddle and galloped through the rest of the chapters. And the rest is history.
I know I could have summarized this in one or two paragraphs, but I took the long-winded route in hopes that there’s someone like me out there who wants to write and submit but has self-doubts. Each writer’s journey is different, but every one of us has the same end result in mind. Getting published! There is no better time than the present for a writer to find help and information thanks to the wonderful Internet, which did not exist when I started out. There are so many free articles that one only has to type in a few key words and Google will give you a list of links. A writer can join on-line groups, find a critique partner, look up help instantly. Chat rooms are a fun place to hang out and befriend other writers and readers.
Whatever your dream, go for it, no matter how long it takes. Accept there will be stop signs and yield signs and potholes and rainy days but look for the rainbow in those misty skies. Do enter a few contests just to get the feedback (although I understand nowadays one just gets a score, and not much else from some of the contests), so enter only those where you will get scoresheets and comments back. And learn from the rejections, because sometimes there are some great nuggets of truth to guide you. Believe in yourself, because if you don’t, how can you expect anyone else to? I firmly believe we are all born with a special gift and it’s up to each of us to find out what it is and polish it till it gleams. Choose something that makes you happy. I did, and luckily, I’m now living my dream, thanks to the wonderful ladies at Prairie Rose Publications.
Elizabeth Clements
www.elizabethclements.com
