A Fork in the Road by Liz Flaherty

I’ve kind of enjoyed the inevitable forks in life’s roads. Not that I’ve always taken the right one, you understand. Heaven knows there were a few boyfriends and lots of outfits and hair colors I should have taken a pass on. I sometimes paid the wrong bill in the days of robbing Peter to pay Paul, leaving us sweating anxiety drops until payday. I shudder when I think how often I told my kids No when I should have said Yes or even better, What do you think you should do?

In my work life, it was much the same. I had several jobs before I got the right one. I didn’t like them all, and I quit a few before I’d even finished training. I was fired from two because the choices made by an 18-year-old me were … well, stupid. But then I found the right place and stayed for 30 years and loved most of those years. 

I sold several books while I worked that day job, to a few different publishers, both large and small. When I sat down to write, there was no thought of being blocked, of being too tired, of the words just not coming, because there was so little time for writing that using it well was a matter of urgency. I wrote among the chaos of teenagers in the house, constant noise, and inexhaustible mountains of laundry waiting to be serviced. 

It was the very best of side hustles.

 I retired from the day job, but kept writing books. I called it fulltime, but it really wasn’t—I never met a wanna have lunch? invitation I didn’t like, and I issued plenty of them on my own.

As I went along this very fun road, though, I realized the forks in it had become both more crooked and vastly convoluted. In order to fully abuse this metaphor, I will say all the different directions have numerous potholes, mud puddles, and thorn-laden limbs in them. The comfortable place I’d found with my publisher disappeared and let’s try this ventures with a few others were disappointing. Four books were published by one, and I had four different editors. Covers were nice and editing was good; however, sales were almost nonexistent, as was any promotion by the publisher.  

This may sound like I’m whining, and maybe I am, but in this latest jog in the path of my writing career, I no longer receive publisher advances and my royalties are sometimes scarcely enough to cover what is necessarily spent on promotion. Every decision I make is taking a crapshoot with my checkbook, because I never know for sure what’s going to work. I spend more time exploring review possibilities and promotional websites than I do researching what I need to make me sound like I know what I’m talking about when I write fiction.   

Whenever something doesn’t work, I am immediately certain it’s because I can no longer write. 

Yes, immediately. That faulty jog I took just yanks me right into its thorny clutches. As certainly as the words of a terrible review brand themselves on my forever memory as soon as I read them, unresponsiveness to money spent on promotion burns a permanent hole in the wasted column of my ledger. I am well past retirement age. My writing legs are getting wobbly and I depend a lot on the technology I find increasingly difficult. 

Is it time? Should I quit?

But sometimes, when I’m imaginarily sitting on a make-believe upside-down bucket and trying to decide which bumpy fork I will take, I remember that my first book was published when I was 49. The family nest was already empty and I’d been coloring my hair for quite a while and both Peter and Paul were being paid on time when I got the call. And then it was several years before I got it again. 

Forty-nine seemed awfully late in life to be starting a new career, veering off to an unknown path that might or might not reach a happy destination. At least, at the time, it seemed late. But it’s been twenty-six years and more than twenty books since then. 

More so now than ever, each time I have a book published is a thrill, lending excitement and credibility to the hours and dollars I spend in the accomplishment. Each box of book mail is the grandest of gifts. Every good review is like a shining star in my own very personal sky.

It is because of those gifts, those stars, and the excitement of it all that I will continue to take the thorny, potholed fork in my road. I will continue to write until I can’t anymore, and it must be my decision of when that is. 

In Patches of Red, Ellie Wentz decides when it’s time to make a career change, a life change, a location change, and second-guesses herself … well, a lot. Neither she nor her handsome landlord, Jess Grant, want to share their particular directions, and they’ve both had too many thorns and bumps to want to take chances on more. But still … is that a happy destination over there somewhere?

Patches of Red (Colors, the Harper Loch Trilogy Book 2) 

He’s handsome but can’t even remember her name. She’s pretty, but her finickiness drives him crazy.

After twenty years as a nurse practitioner in the same practice, Ellie Wentz gives notice. When office politics interferes with her job, it’s time to get a new one. When her son and daughter-in-law buy her house and she has sold and given away everything else that’s not attached to her heartstrings, she packs up what remains and goes to Harper Loch to spend time with her best friend. She’ll decide what to do and where to go from there. No matter how much the handsome friend of her friends annoys her.
Jesse Grant comes to Harper Loch to help out his niece for a few weeks. He’s retired from the navy, his boys are grown, and he’s at loose ends. But he really likes the little lake community in Michigan—he thinks he might stay. Long widowed, he has no interest in getting married again, and neither does the redhead he can’t seem to avoid. And yet …

Buy links

Amazon: https://a.co/d/0hRgS4Di

D2D: https://books2read.com/u/mZ98YJ

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Retired from the post office, Liz Flaherty spends non-writing time sewing, quilting, and wanting to travel. The author of 20-some books and her husband Duane share an old farmhouse in North Central Indiana.

Liz Flaherty thinks one of the things that keeps you young when you quite obviously aren’t anymore is the constant chances you have to reinvent yourself. Her latest professional incarnation is as a fledgling women’s fiction author and she is enjoying every minute that she’s not scared to death.  

She can be reached at lizkflaherty@gmail.com 

Website: https://www.lizflaherty.net/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/lizkflaherty

Amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Liz-Flaherty/author/B001J919R4?

LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/LizFlaherty

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing