“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day’s work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.” – John Steinbeck.
Well, there you go.
2020 has been a lesson in, well, a lot of things. Not the least of them: why I write and why I still write. Like every other facet of life, publishing took a hit. I’ve had two books delayed due to COVID-19, and I’m between projects for the first time in 20 years.
I’ve finished my three-book, two-novella “Western Dreams” suite. Waiting to submit the last full novel and for the second novella to be published this Christmas. While I’m deep in research for a possible next series, I’m done for now with the Oregon Trail and these characters.
And I miss them.
They are fading away from me, these people I’ve lived every day with for so long, from a hero and heroine becoming minor characters in someone else’s story, from minor characters coming to the fore to get their own book. All I can do now is release them into the world, like sending a child to first grade or college or into marriage. All I can do is let go.
And face the “desolate impossibility,” as Steinbeck wrote, of scoping out a new time period, place, and people. What and who they love, their scars, their histories, and how it all plays out against this new background. How they play against each other, and what Jesus Christ wants to do in their lives.
I could get out now, enjoy what’s left of my threescore and ten, enjoy my husband’s retirement with him. Take up a hobby, get a part-time job with fixed hours, do the housecleaning that didn’t seem to happen during our COVID isolation. I have no deadlines to meet and nothing to prove.
But then there are those new characters, peeking over the horizon and daring me to go deep with them, to get to know them and explore their joys and sorrows. There’s a whole new landscape to put them in and, possibly, a whole new story to tell.
About the Author:
Kathleen Bailey is a journalist and novelist with 40 years of experience in the nonfiction, newspaper, and inspirational fields. Born in 1951, she was a child in the ’50s, a teen in the ’60s, a young adult in the ’70s, and a young mom in the ’80s. It’s been a turbulent, colorful time to grow up, and she’s enjoyed every minute of it and written about most of it.
Bailey’s work includes both historical and contemporary fiction, with an underlying thread of men and women finding their way home, to Christ and each other. Her first Pelican book, Westward Hope, was published in September 2019.
You can reach at Kathleen D. Bailey on: Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (@piechick1).
Buy her books: Westward Hope, first in the Western Dreams series. Settler's Hope, the sequel. "The Logger's Christmas Bride", a related novella, December 2019 "The Widow's Christmas Miracle", another related novella, December 2020
(The featured picture is the mountains of New Hampshire, the author’s home. They’re a breathtaking sight in the fall. They were here before humanity and will be when humanity is gone.)
The art of maple sugar making, a fixture in the North Country, takes hours of backbreaking work for every ounce of finished syrup.