Creativity can be very, very fickle. This is a lesson I’ve learned in the past, but one in which I am now a graduate student of. 
Lately, I’ve been recieving e-mails from a few folks who are struggling with their own creativity, with their own forward motion, so I thought I’d post something about the journey I’ve taken and am still on. As any creative person will tell you, sometimes being productive is easy. Other times? Not so much.
Life events can halt creativity in its tracks. For example, during my pregnancies and after each of my kids were born, I had zilch for creativity. Which makes a lot of sense. I was tired, busy, and trying to do a zillion things at once. Luckily, times like these pass. Life begins to find a normal rhythm again, and creativity returns.
I’ve also felt this way a few times during the agent submission process, when I knew I was getting close, but continued to receive rejections. Sure, these rejections were, for the most part, filled with positive words about my writing, my characterization, and my voice, but at the end of the day, they were still a “No.” A few of these hit way harder than all of the others.
These rejections, far more than the others, threw me for a big-old loop. I was devastated. I was sad. I was feeling pretty hopeless about my writing. Because, for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why or how I could be so close, recieve such tremendously positive comments, and still not find an agent.
This business can break your heart, and it’s broken my heart and pretty much all of my writer friends’ hearts over and over again. I stopped writing for a while, not too long in the scheme of things, but still a while. I stopped reading industry blogs. I stopped researching agents. I stopped creating. I stopped writing.
Luckily, as difficult as this time was, I did eventually lick my wounds and get back up on that horse. (How’s that for a cliche-filled sentence?). I have an awesome support system, and they were all there for me in one way or another. I started writing again. And I continued to write, continued to dream, continued to hope. But…some of the magic had disappeared. Some of what made writing so fun before seemed to be gone. Because while I wrote, while I created, it felt like a job, like something I had to do, and not so much like something I wanted to do. This also broke my heart.
Then, with the continued help of friends and other writers, I found my way back to the magic of telling a story. I was having fun again. My dreams felt real again, and not just a “well, this has always been my dream, so I can’t give up” sort of a dream. It was in this time frame that I finaled in a few writing contests and had excellent feedback from the editor who would become my editor (not that i knew that then!), and all of this continued to keep the creative fires burning bright and my dreams alive.
But then I got sick. Really, really sick. I was in the hospital for a long while, and when I came home, guess what? I didn’t feel even the slightest creative, at least so far as writing went. Instead, I felt tired (which, um, sort of makes sense), but I also didn’t really think about writing, or about the fact that my book was still at several agents and was still under consideration at Dorchester Publishing. I sort of flattened out, focused on getting better, focused on returning to writing for my clients, and that was about it. I was happy to be with my family. That, at the time, seemed like enough of a dream.
Well, okay, this was also when I fell in love with the show LOST, watched way too many hours of HGTV, and played a lot of World of Warcraft and Sims 2.
Slowly, though, as my body healed, my creative energy also returned to me. I wasn’t looking for it. I’m not even sure if I really missed it. But it came back, and when it did, I was so grateful. I tried to work on the manuscript I’d been involved in before I became ill, but that story didn’t appeal to me any longer. I started something new. I touched base with the agents who still had my work. I submitted TASTE to another house via a contest, and they asked for the full, but I didn’t submit it immediately. I wanted to wait for Dorchester.
Time passed and I continued to write, continued to be creative in other ways–I colored in coloring books and painted in those paint-by-number kits, and I spent time that I wasn’t working or writing with my family. I continued to heal. And then, one day, I received “The Call.” It was the best HEA ever, and I was sure that I’d never fight my creative demons again. This was it. I was a writer, and that was that.
Oh, was I wrong. So wrong. In the year-and-a-half that followed the sale, the economy took a swift downward turn, affecting my family to a large degree. My grandfather and then my aunt passed away. My ex mother-in-law became ill, and she, too, passed away. Other stuff happened that was difficult to deal with. And my creative energy disappeared. Writing A BREATH OF MAGIC was hard. Incredibly hard. I fought for every word. I fought for every scene. There were times that I was sure that the book would either never get written or that it would be horrible if I managed to finish it. I was no longer a writer, I was sure. Two books and I was done. I was sure that I was going to let everyone, including myself, down.
But I had a contract. I had an editor and an agent who believed in me. I had readers who were excited about the series e-mailing me. These things meant something to me. They meant a lot, and that meant I couldn’t give up, even if somewhere deep inside, I wanted to. So I didn’t turn into the world of gaming or TV shows as an escape. I didn’t lose myself in other authors’ books. I sat at my computer every single day and fought for the words. I struggled to find the story. I did everything I could to connect with my heroine, with the journey I knew she needed to take, but still I struggled.
This book kicked my butt. What was going on around me, inside of me, kicked my butt. But each day that I sat down and wrote proved something to me–I am a writer. This is what I do. This is what I want to do. Slowly, way-too-slowly, the story began to come alive, and the words finally started coming easier. My editor was a huge help. I owe a lot of this story to Chris’s belief in me and that I could do it. I also owe a lot to my amazing critique partners–Natalie and Connie–for sticking with me, to my friends for standing beside me, and of course, to the readers, whose e-mails reminded me of how much this series meant to them.
So I did it, with the help of everyone above and my own fair amount of stubborness. And guess what? I am so proud of A BREATH OF MAGIC. It’s my favorite of the three, and I think, it’s my strongest book yet. In a strange way, getting through this process, as difficult as it was, has given me something I wouldn’t have if the book had poured out of me. For that, I’m grateful.
Creativity–the want to create something–is fickle. Sometimes it’s there in huge, blossoming, beautiful ways that make every word you type a joy. But I’ve learned that even when it isn’t there, when the want to write has left me for whatever reason, that I can still create.
You can too.
Don’t Forget!
This week, we’re talking about Subplots at The Novel Girls. I also talked a fair bit about secondary characters, because to me, they often go hand-in-hand. Pop over on Monday and check it out!
If you’re in the Toledo, OH area on March 27th, I would love to see you at MVRWAs Spring Book Lover’s Event! Stop in for free books, snacks, and a Q&A with local authors.
