Thursday, September 09, 2010

A Writer’s Life: Into the Woods by Leona Beasley


The Rockefeller Preserve has become my sanctuary. I walk and run the wood in search of mostly exercise, but secretly I also look for inspiration.



I can’t say I find it, only that after I’ve spent an hour I’ve at least burned calories. But sometimes I tell the trees my problem, the challenges I face in working to become a published novelist.

I guess you could say I’m lucky and I do get Arts and Culture articles published online at AOL’s Tarrytown Patch. I could live a much more enisled existence. Still my heart wants more. And so does my soul. Doesn’t every writer?

In grad school I listened on as a professor rail on about his former colleague (a really famous writer at Princeton) inability to appreciate or see all of her success.

“You never heard such moaning, the professor complained. Meanwhile she publishes a book a year, gets advanced royalties and that’s not counting her short stories, and essays.”

To my first mind my less famous professor was being a hater. Yet it did seem impossible for someone so famous to be so insecure. But fame and fortune doesn’t fan the flame of insecurity. Insecurity is its own monster.

Insecurity isn’t my challenge mine is the getting and the knowing my novel is structurally sound, and landing in the right hands. It’s a bit of a crapshoot. And minus religion it’s all seems to be a walk of faith, chance, and happenstance.

You have to drive the publishing campaign like you know where you’re going. Momentum is your ally.

And until I’ve got a structurally sound novel in the rights set of hands I’ll have to keep it moving. Keep my mind focused, and my energy directed. And I’ll push against hope that all my good work, great training, focus and drive lands me published.

And then I’ll start all over again.

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