NOT a Means to an End!
I just found out a few days ago that my novel, The Initiation of Ms Holly, was awarded ‘Top Pick’ status on The Romance Reviews. Okay, that’s my shameless promotion for the day. :) I splashed my news all over Facebook and Twitter and shared it with my friends via email, then I want back to work…writing. My husband came home in the evening. He congratulated me, we had dinner then I went back to work…writing. Several hours later, I shut down the computer and shuffled off to bed already thinking about how soon tomorrow I could clear the decks and get back to work…writing. It hit me then that maybe I should have celebrated such good news. Maybe we should have gone out for dinner or had a bottle of fizz and watched a really good film or something. Instead…I wrote. You get the picture, and since I know a lot of you out there are writers too, I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Celebrating can be so disruptive, and so often not nearly as much fun as… well, writing. Okay, I was on the final press to finish the manuscript of my second novel, The Pet Shop, and probably even more obsessive than usual, but I was just having so damn much fun!
Then Friday night, I finally finished the manuscript, and Saturday morning I got it off to Xcite. By the time I was finished, my husband had packed lunches into the rucksacks, made up a flask of tea and prepared water bottles. He knows his window of opportunity is slim. He had to get me slathered with sun screen, dressed in walking clothes and out the door before I decided that since The Pet Shop was done, there are a couple of short stories I’ve been dying to write before I get stuck into my next novel, Lakeland Heat Wave. But he’s good. He’s really good. He had me kitted up and out the door before I could give those short stories a second thought. Of course by the end of the day, for the last couple of miles, I was thinking about… you know, writing!
So, I decided to celebrate The Initiation of Ms Holly’s success and The Pet Shop’s send off by having a beer and, you guessed it, writing this blog post because I know you’ll all understand.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the writing obsession. Non-writers are always saying we should celebrate our successes or we should take a break, or we shouldn’t work so hard. They just don’t get it. Writing is NOT a means to an end. It IS the end. The story that we are inspired to put down is never ending. And it’s just as well because what on earth would we do with our time if we couldn’t write? It isn’t just important that I get on with the next project as soon as I get the last one out the door, it’s essential. (I get really twitchy if I don’t.)That’s how we writers are. It’s not about the destination. It’s about the journey, and the journey is every word we write, every idea that pushes its way out of our head onto the written page. The journey is also about all of our characters, whether we’ve created them yet or not. And it’s about the on-going back story that is forever unfolding in our heads, all the things we know about our characters and their lives that no one else knows – no one else will ever know because it never gets on the page. But WE know. We know it all.
Is it an obsession? Oh yes. Do I want the cure? Absolutely not! Am I afraid I’ll run out of stuff to write? No! I’m afraid I’ll run out of time to write stuff!
The truth of the matter is what I do to celebrate my writing successes, is write. What I do for recreation is write, what I do when I’m not writing is think about writing. Actually, you may not know this, but you are all participating, right this very moment, in my celebration party! So, grab a glass of wine, a pint, a Margarita, whatever your drink of choice is and raise it with me as we toast, not the destination, but the totally fabulous journey that is writing! On second thought, just grab a pen and paper or sit down with your laptop and write something!
*****
K D Grace was born with a writing obsession. It got worse once she actually learned HOW to write. There's no treatment for it. It's progressive and chronic and quite often interferes with normal, everyday functioning. She might actually be concerned if it wasn't so damned much fun most of the time.
K D's erotic romance novel, The Initiation of Ms Holly, published by Xcite Books, is now available everywhere.
Her erotica has been published with Xcite Books, Mammoth, Cleis Press, Black Lace, Erotic Review, Ravenous Romance, and Scarlet Magazine.
Her second novel, The Pet Shop, also published by Xcite Books, will be available in October 2011.
Find out more about K D Grace on her website, http://kdgrace.co.uk. She's also on Facebook and Twitter.
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