WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO "HANG IN THERE"?

Lots of determination and belief in yourself, that's what it takes.

I got to thinking about why and how I kept the faith that it was going to happen. Someday these books would be published. I think it was because I knew I had a good story to tell that would grab people's hearts, and I was determined to do what it took to get it published.

Part of what it took turned out to be really studying how to write fiction, for one thing.I attended many conferences and workshops, joined writer's organizations and absorbed information from everything I got my hands on. I kept an open mind. Critiques were not an attack on me or my writing. They were an effort to help me reach my goal, and if I wasn't ready to listen and evaluate the suggestions other writers were willing to give me, well, then I wasn't sincere about getting this published. And, let me tell you, I WAS SINCERE.

Sure, I'd put it down and pick it up again. Once I let it rest on a shelf for two years. But I always went back. And, each time I did, I brought something new to the manuscript, be it experience, technique or a great new scene I'd thought of.

Also, as I said, many of the characters in these two books are modeled on people I knew, or composites of people I knew and things that I really experienced myself. Thank goodness, not the awful stuff, but little memories, like picking all of the neighbor's flowers as a child so I could bring my mother a bouquet. I envisioning myself as a Nancy Drew, and along with four girlfriends, investigated the neighbors, hoping to find them guilty of some dastardly crime. Where were the clues?

These are the fabrics of our fiction, and we weave them into a tapestry that eventually becomes a book or a story. If you're a writer, do you reach into your memories to craft situations, give attributes to your characters that you loved or hated in someone you knew? In a way, that's what drives the completion and polishing of a book. If you can't get it good enough, no one else will ever read about all of these things.

So, I kept at it...edit after edit...wonderful writer friends helping me along the way. After so many years it clicked. I was ready and now it was time to get really serious. What would it take to get this book to print? The first thing, as it turned out, was to hone it down into two books. No publisher was going to take a 600 page tome unless it was from a J.K. Rowling or a Stephen King. But around 300 pages...that was a workable book.

So, those are my thoughts for tonight.

--Arliss