Writers Who Inspire Me (Katherine Pritchett)

  

      First of all, let me, apologize for completely forgetting last month’s blog. I was in Tennessee with all my children and grandchildren, including the one just born in July; for some reason, blogs were not on my mind. And now it is really hard to focus on much of anything, because my novel, What the River Knows, will be released by The Wild Rose Press on October 14. (You can preorder now, but the e-book won't download until the 14th and the paperback won't ship until then.) 

The E-book link http://www.wildrosepublishing.com/maincatalog_v151/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=195&products_id=6413 

The Paperback link

http://www.wildrosepublishing.com/maincatalog_v151/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=191&products_id=6459 

       This is the culmination of a dream I’ve cherished since I was 14. Or maybe I should say, the beginning of the dream. My dream included me being the author of many books. So, when we celebrate at WARA’s retreat in a couple of weeks, we will drink to the next book.

          

      Now, on to writers who inspire me. I could say Stephen King, who persevered despite reams of rejections, or Frank Herbert, whose Dune made me despair of ever writing that well, or Ray Bradbury, whose Martian Chronicles is a lyrical allegory I enjoy still. Or Hemingway, toiling through despair, alcoholism and great mistakes in love—he wrote better miserable. But the writers who truly inspire me are none of the so-called greats. Those writers who keep me going are the writers I know personally.

            

    Many of these are the ladies of WARA. Like me, most of you hold down a full time job, many of you parent children still at home. You deal with many tasks that demand your attention and it is easy to put off the writing “till there is more time.” But we all know that time is never guaranteed. So, on we write. We usually don’t finish a novel in a month, even pushed by NaNoWriMo or WARA’s version of it. We are lucky to grab 15 minutes to add a paragraph or two to our work in progress. Yet, we critique each other’s work, brainstorm with our friends to help break through blockages in the plot flow, research one more idea. We keep on going, no matter what tries to keep us from writing. We can’t “not write.”

    

   I’m sure the greats we would hope to emulate had these same issues. They kept on keeping on and we can, too. Maybe someday, we’ll be the writers another generation will look to as examples. Let’s give them good ones.

   Write on!