I love to listen to people and consider learning about their individuality, a huge experience. I’ve taken aspects of the knowledge I’ve gained about people and put them into my characters. Most of my legal knowledge has stemmed from my full-time job, because I work for the district attorney and have done so now for nine years. Every experience can be a learning experience, if you let it.
What are your main concerns as a writer?
Time... if I’m good enough to sustain a writing career... getting my name out there and promoting myself (which is the hardest part of what I do because I'm very modest).
There’s always the fear that you have only one story to tell, and others won’t come afterwards (though the voices in my head don’t stop.) It’s difficult, because I actually have a full-time career and do my writing on the side, so it takes a lot of time management, self-discipline and giving up things you might want to do, like enjoying a summer day at the lake.
How I'm dealing with all this is, I look at the future and not the here and now. Writing is my passion. I know I have to set deadlines for myself, appointments for writing, and I have to discipline myself to get it done. When you have a passion for something like this, you’ll make the time to do it.
How easy or difficult is it to stick to these appointments?
I have good days, bad days and days when I sit down at my computer and the words won’t stop coming. Then, when I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open, I’ll take a recorder and pen and paper to bed because I have to jot down or record my ideas. I’ve lost many ideas because I couldn’t remember them, so I’ve learned my lesson. It may only be a line or two that comes into my head that I can go off of later.
Other times, it seems like my words are dry and stale and I couldn’t tell you the basic color of the sky. During the good days, I write as much as I can. During those stale times, I still write - I do a lot of reading, journaling, researching, watching movies, even coloring… anything to get my creativity juices flowing again. I also remember that this too shall pass.
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