True Blog...or Newsletter??

They say the important thing about blogging is to be consistent and regular about your posts. Ooops! I can tell you two things I'm not--consistent and regular. I'd like to think I'm just special, but I could probably do with a little more consistency and some days I think it would be nice to be "regular". But, I'm not. So we may want to call this a "Newsletter" rather than a "Blog". I just don't want to tick off any real bloggers out there. And I know there are a LOT of you. These days, any time I should be writing, I go online and read blogs. Writers, moms, actors, models, singles, college students...I call this time "research" even though I know research is =not= supposed to take 38 hours a week. I know this because if the research takes 38 hours, it leaves VERY little time for the writing. And unfortunately, that's the part that gets the book done.

If you've ever known a writer (an honest one), you'll know that there is quite a bit of magnetic push and pull between author and book. (Mostly push.) Sure, there are days when it's all I can do to grab a cup of coffee and put socks on before I hit the keys. These kinds of days happen about once every sixteen months. And boy, are they WONDERFUL!!! The rest of the time, I spend each day doing my darndest not to write at all. I can come up with the most creative ways to avoid writing. Email, blogs, IM--those are easy ones. Shopping, errands--dry cleaning, shoe repair, hardware store, the list could go on forever. At the end of one long spell of procrastination, I had actually completed every errand on the never-ending list. I was so desperate not to write, I created a 12-month household budget to avoid writing. Then, I spent two weeks trying to stick by it. Pretty soon, though, the pain of the method of procrastination became worse than the writing itself. So I scraped the budget and actually worked on the darn book...

People sometimes ask how I knew I wanted to be a writer or how I got published. I wrote my first book in a closet in a San Francisco apartment. It had a tiny window at one end and the smallest desk you've ever seen. I could barely fit my big tube monitor and the keyboard on it and I was forced to crank my neck 90 degrees to see the screen while I was typing. The pigeons roosted in the eves just outside the window over my desk and they would coo little epithets at me as I typed. "That makes no sense!" "That sentence stinks!" "Delete. Delete. Delete." Pigeons can be terribly cruel. The other two-thirds of the closet were filled with clothes and bins of things that didn't fit into the twelve inchs of bedroom closet space.

Friends and family looked in that room and shook their heads. "How do you write in here?" I loved it. I loved that little box. I wrote Savage Art and Ruthless Game there. In our next house, I had a real office...for almost six whole months while I was writing Chasing Darkness! Then it became a nursery and I was back to a corner of the guest room. Next, I had a real office again (Cold Silence) for almost nine months before it, too, became a nursery. It's not as if someone ousted me. I was ultimately responsible for those little people who arrived in tiny bundles and booted me from my office. They were and are well worth the sacrifice!

Finally, I got an office downtown where there was NO WAY it would become a nursery since there are laws against leaving your babies downtown when you go home at night. Phew! Safe at least. And here I am. There are no crayons on the floor, no scraps of manuscript that someone has colored over and then cut into little shreds with safety scissors and left for something more interesting--like tape or glue.

Just me and my book. And I look back on all those offices and the closet and I realize, it doesn't matter where I am. It's always just me and the book. And it's good. It's been hard. I've collected something like 150 rejection letters and I know I'm not through. I've had the nice ones that point out the things the editor or agent likes. And I've had the cruel ones. My favorite is the one that went like this:
"Dear Ms Girard,
The title is wonderful. The rest of it sucks."

Hmm. Now, I don't think that's a smart thing to write to someone who spends her days writing about killing people. But, to the best of my knowledge, that man is still alive. So far.

But despite all of that, I am at a wonderful point in my career. Don't quote me because tomorrow could be different. Maybe this is just some fleeting instant of contentment. The Rookie Club will be released next June by Penguin Putnam. (Watch the site for sample chapters coming soon!) Now, I am at work on Hailey Wyatt's story, One Clean Shot.

For those of you who are aspiring to write, you have heard how hard it is--how competitive, how tough to break into. But I am telling you, if it's your passion, it's worth it. As I sit here and write this silly blog, I realize I am so fortunate. I love my job. I have my days, of course. We all do. But when the words come, even just a sentence, and an image is created just perfectly, I sit back in this room and glance around at photographs of the people who cheer me on, of the books that have already been read and enjoyed, of the art that inspires me. I close my eyes and listen to something by Whiskeytown or Jack Johnson and I think, this is what I was meant to do. And I'm doing it.

When I have the days when I'm not sure it makes sense and I get frustrated, sometimes I read this excerpt by Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist, as a reminder of what it means to live your dream. Happy writing and reading until next time....


Dream


You are in a store. You try on a garment that fits you perfectly. You try on another, but it's too large, it itches a bit, the sleeves drag on the floor. Both garments sell for the same price. Which do you buy?

It isn't a trick question: You should buy the one that fits better, of course. This logic can also apply to the way we decide to live our lives. We know intuitively that there is a life we long to have, a dream we've harbored--sometimes since childhood. But too often we decide to follow a path that is not really our own, one that others have set for us. We forget that whichever way we go, the price is the same: In both cases, we will pass through difficult and happy moments, hours of solitude, and many complex situations. But when we are living our dream, the difficulties we encounter make sense.

You may have heard the parable of the three men laboring in a field of rocks. Each is asked what he is doing. The first man says, "Can't you see? I'm breaking rocks!" The second man replies, "Can't you see? I'm earning my salary!" The third man answers, "Can't you see? I'm building a cathedral!" This lovely story, which my mother first told me when I was a child, illustrates both the necessity of hard work in realizing a dream as well as the need to keep the vision in your mind's eye--even when others don't see or understand it.

The money we receive in return for our eight hours of work each day can be spent any number of ways; the only thing we cannot buy is extra time. So, during the minutes we have, I believe it is better to live a dream rather than simply dream it. The dream is the start of something greater, something that impels us to make daring decisions. And its' true that the person who pursues a dream takes many risks. But the person who does not runs risks that are even greater.

By Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist