Why I write what I do

Years ago, I was at an expo and met June Juanico, who was one of Elvis Presley’s girlfriends in the 1950s. At the time I was  a middle school principal and had no time for writing, so I was not yet a published author.

But an author was what I’d always wanted to be. June wasn’t an actual author. I’m sure she had a ghost writer, someone to put her memories into words for an enjoyable read, which he/she did.

I had written for newspapers and magazines, but what I really wanted was to write fiction. And me being who I am, I couldn’t write mainstream fiction if it meant writing sex scenes and using profanity in dialogue. That’s now who I am.

So I discovered the genre of Christian fiction. That genre is pretty broad, but I learned Christian fiction can be something as simple as no sex scenes, no profanity, and characters that acknowledge God in some way. Think of “Little House on the Prairie” and you get the idea. Clean books. Books I felt comfortable writing.

My first book was The Ghosts of Graceland, a mystery targeted to girls ages eight to twelve. It is set in Memphis, in a neighborhood behind Elvis Presley’s estate, and is a mystery as well as a book dealing with family relationships. The second book in the series, Music City Mayhem, takes Mandi and her twin to the world of country music. Both books are available on Amazon for 99 cents as ebooks and $6.99 as paperbacks.

My third book was Aimee, an 1895 Arizona wilderness story, was harder. The publisher sent it back. It wasn’t interesting. Didn’t grab attention. So I rewrote it. Resubmitted it. This time it was accepted.

Okay, I’ve bored you with talking about my books. I haven’t told you about all of them, just the early ones. What is my point?

Well, the first is that writing is harder than I thought it would be. You truly do have writers’ block. You get stuck. You write poorly at times. Your pride can be hurt by critiques and rejections.

Because you don’t go to an office to do you work, your friends and family don’t always understand that you need to keep regular hours for writing just as you would for any other job. They don’t realize how slow the process is or how much rewriting takes place. Rewriting and rewriting.

I work as an editor, too, so sometimes my own writing has to take a back seat to the project at hand, the one needing to be published.

In spite of all that, I continue to write because I love it. I love creating stories because so many story ideas play about in my head all the time. I’ll never be a John Grisham or another best-selling author, but maybe I have a small fan base who enjoys my work.

And if I bring a little enjoyment to someone while using my creative energy, that’s okay with me. Sure, I’d love to be hugely successful with my books on some best-seller list, but if not, well, that’s okay. Thanks to Mantle Rock Publishing, I am an actual, not self-published author. I have achieved the dream I’v had since I was seven years old.