Same old same old

Recently I met up with an old writer friend. She told me that she’d been struggling for weeks with an impossibly unwieldy chapter, until suddenly she realised it was actually two chapters. Once she realised that, she said, the pieces pulled apart easily at a natural division.

I loved her story because that had just happened to me too, and not for the first time.

The other thing she said was that she’s been doing anything to postpone writing because it seemed too difficult, but finally she got down to it and it wasn’t as hard as she'd feared. She discovered yet again that the only way to do the work is to do the work.

Me too, I thought. I just have to get down and start it, no matter how afraid of it I am.

I’m afraid of the history chapters in my book. I find them so daunting to write I was even hoping my publisher would tell me I didn’t have to write them, that the book would be better off without them!

Funny how you need to learn the same things over and over again and also how universal these issues are.

Alzheimer's: A Love Story

I’ve sold my book about my mother's Alzheimer's. (This is not a picture of my mother, but of Alois Alzheimer who discovered the disease.) The book's working title is Alzheimer's: A Love Story.

I originally thought I’d wait until I finished the first draft before sending it off to a publisher, but I changed my mind. I began to feel that I needed editorial assistance with the structure, and without that I thought I’d waste a lot of time.

I submitted the first ten chapters to Scribe, the first publisher on my list, and three days later they offered me a contract.

They called it ‘impressive and moving’. Yippee!

It makes me nervous. This book that thus far has belonged only to me now has to answer to the outside world. But I’m thrilled and excited too, and I look forward to working on it with an editor. And of course to seeing it in the hands of readers.