It’s not just having an idea for a story…

And it’s not just outlining the details or writing the story. It’s not just editing the story…and then editing it again and again. And it’s not just letting other people read your story, and then incorporating all of their critiques/feedback. After all of that, now you have to prepare to submit.

Writing a book is tough, tiring, draining, sometimes depressing…but that is what it takes to tell a good story.

And eventually, you read a sentence, a paragraph, a page, a chapter, and the world seems perfect. You find the right words, a clever descriptive phrase, a funny joke, an emotional moment, and you realize why you do it.

And you hope that you get a chance to share it, and that someone else will want to read it.

Submitting is just another mountain to climb, one step at a time…hopefully, we just keep moving up and don’t slip back down, but the slope is steep - success is not guaranteed.

But you definitely cannot succeed if you don’t try. So I am sending out my submissions. Fingers crossed.

It’s been a few years since I first started typing out the first few words of The Fire Ruby.

It was before we got the dog (Maisie - a goldendoodle - now 3.5 years old). Before the birth of my third child (a year younger than the dog - now walking, talking, and trouble-making).

I had notes in my phone, quickly jotted down each night after I told the stories to my 2 older kids. A skeleton outline. A beginning, middle, and end, for 3 books to complete a trilogy.

The idea felt substantial, but I didn’t really know what I was doing. I had taken 2 creative writing courses in university. One for poetry. One for short stories. I had written some poems on my own before that. But I liked telling stories…and my kids liked listening to them - a positive feedback loop.

And I had a lot of material to work from…I have always been a reader. David Eddings, Anne McCaffrey, and Margaret Weis and Tracey Wiseman - some of my foundational exposure to fantasy. Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Orson Scott Card, and Frank Herbert - covering the sci-fi bases. Throw in some Michael Crichton, John Grisham, and Dan Brown. And, of course, my more modern go-tos…John Scalzi, Hugh Howey, Dennis E. Taylor, Martha Wells (I can re-read Murderbot again and again).

I started typing on my laptop, sitting in my den, after the kids went to bed, and it started to take shape…with some challenges.

The outline helped - it gave me a structure - but telling stories at bedtime is just a tad bit different than writing a book. The setting changed. A few new characters. More detail and subplots added to a make a complete novel.

At one point, after about 30,000 words, my computer crashed. The hard drive toast. Panic! There was no back-up! A quick google search and, luckily, I found a savior. It was all recovered. And there was good news too. It allowed me to re-evaluate what I had written. I changed the format, opting for multiple perspectives.

Then, another hurdle - writer’s block. Stuck until I realized I needed to restructure the beginning and add another chapter to make a character’s actions make sense.

Simply put, there was a learning curve.

Fast forward and now there is a complete manuscript ready to be sent out. Stay tuned to find out how it turns out, since I am sure I still have more to learn…