When The Going Gets Tough

I always wanted to write. But I never quite believed that I could write my own book.

Let alone publish it.

My husband Marc is a firm believer that anything is possible if you’re willing to work hard enough for what you want. We had our first child in 2007 and it was the biggest challenge I had ever faced. As I learned to cope, however, I started to believe that maybe, just maybe, I was actually capable of writing a book. Marc was always the first to encourage me with my writing.

During the summer of 2013 on a family holiday, inspiration for a thriller set on a sunny Spanish island struck. My brilliant husband came to the rescue, handing me a notebook and pen and telling me to go for it. I spent the rest of that holiday writing. By the time our plane touched down back home I had 7,000 words, and there was no stopping me.

Never pausing to edit, I ploughed through 26000 words until I had a novella which I felt was worthy of readers. Marc encouraged me to self-publish and spent a very patient few weeks helping me look into the possibilities. I edited for a month, persuading family to proofread for me, and by November of 2013, I had self-published my novella, Escape, on Amazon.

Truly bitten by the writing bug and overwhelmed by the possibilities that self-publishing now afforded me, I got straight on to writing a sequel. The first book had proved I could do it. I wanted the second to be better, longer, more complex and compelling. It took me another 7 months, but by late May of 2014, I had another book, this time 73000 words, continuing the story of the initial novella from a different perspective. Ready to edit, I set a release date of 1st August 2015, giving myself time to take feedback from some beta readers and redraft.

And then, on 19^th June 2015, my 43 year old husband fell ill with what appeared to be some kind of stomach virus. He was sick for 5 days before we took him to the doctor, who sent us straight to hospital where he was admitted on 23^rd June. No-one seemed to know exactly what was wrong, but we were assured that with fluids and painkillers he would be home in a few days.

At 2am on 25^th June I was woken by a phone call telling me to get to the hospital immediately.

After scrambling to find the closest babysitter, I drove to the hospital. On arrival, I found Marc on his way to Intensive Care. He was critically ill. His blood pressure had dropped through the floor. His heartrate was elevated. He was struggling to breathe.

By 3.30am he was in a medically induced coma. The staff were fighting to keep him alive as he went into sepsis and his organs began to shut down.

I am not going to relate the details of what happened over the next few days. Suffice to say, Marc survived. The doctors eventually found that he had contracted Group A Streptococcus (a virus usually found in the throat) in his abdomen and he was given the correct antibiotics. By this time however, his body had all but shut down, he had undergone two emergency operations and had to fight to survive.

In total, he spent forty five days in Intensive Care. He couldn’t speak to me for a month due to a tracheostomy tube which was helping him breathe. He had to learn to breathe again. Walk again. Eat again. He was eventually moved out of Intensive Care into a recovery ward and in September, after three months in hospital, was able to come home.

Having managed for three months as a single parent of two young children, I then became a temporary carer for my husband. There were lots of things he couldn’t manage very well to begin with. He was, however, determined to recover. Rehabilitation after a long stay in Intensive Care is slow and arduous, and now, a year on from the onset of his illness, he is able to cope with most things again. He still gets tired, he can’t walk very far, but he is driving, managing a full day’s work from home and able to attend concerts and sports days at the children’s schools. Things will only get better from this point on.

And as for me? I won’t lie to you. My sequel did sit unattended on my laptop for a long time. But, somewhere in amongst the chaos of hospital visits, of organising friends to take my son to football while I supervised my daughter at ballet, of making sure we had a home-cooked meal at least once a week, I found the time to edit, albeit slowly. Finally I sent my book to beta-readers, many of whom read it quickly and gave me valuable feedback.

I re-edited around January, and found that getting on with something normal, a dream I’d been determined to achieve before Marc’s illness, helped me. I found myself intent on completing it. Publishing it. Just as the challenging experience of coping with my first child gave me the self-belief to write Escape, this second, infinitely more challenging event made me all the more determined to finish its sequel.

The Search was published on 17^th March 2015. No-one was prouder than Marc.

I can’t wait to write the next one.

–C. H. Little has been teaching English at a girls’ high school in Manchester for the last eleven years, but loves to write in her spare time. She lives with her husband in Warrington in the North West of England with their two children, Daniel and Amy.

Find out more about her on her website www.chlittle.com on Twitter @chlittleauthor or on Facebook facebook.com/chlittleauthor

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing