A Mediated Life

My husband, Stacey Cochran, is on a 45-day blog tour to promote his new book, CLAWS. He graciously agreed to stop by my blog today to talk about developing a writing career. And his posting gives me a good reason to get back to blogging…

Amazon link to CLAWS

Thanks so much, Susan, for hosting me on your blog today. As you know I’m in the middle of a 45-day blog tour to promote the release of my new novel CLAWS. It’s been a fun couple of weeks while I’ve been on tour, and I’ve definitely learned a lot of interesting marketing ideas.

It’s been a fun few years since I first wrote this novel, and you’ve gotten to watch this project from its earliest few chapters, through the end of its first draft, to my work with the agent who shopped it around, to this final self-published version of the book.

I guess I’d like to focus today on the topic of the power of a spouse in helping to keep a creative person’s dream alive. I think looking back over the past five years, the general impression I have is how stable we’ve managed to be despite the lack of outward success with my writing.

It’s true that in the past two or three years things have started to take off, but I’m coming around to the realization of how important a long-range view on a writing career is… and how important the kind of security and stability we’ve managed to achieve is in working through the lean years.

It’s interesting because I think a marriage and a family is really built through trust and hard work. That is, a healthy relationship is one with trust and love and highs and lows and ultimately a commitment to one another that shows itself through the continual addition of good memory upon good memory. It’s like building a house or something.

And at the risk of comparing apples and oranges, you know a writing career is not that different. You put in your time, hard work, trust, love, compassion, and stick with it… and maybe trust that the career is what it should be. And at the same time continue to work on improving and getting better and growing and being open.

I’ve never thought about it this way, but a healthy relationship is a lot like a healthy growing writing career or business or non-profit organization. That is, fundamentally, it takes some of the same characteristics to make it work.

At any rate, that’s a little bit of reflection on two seemingly disparate things: a relationship and writing. I’d just like to say thanks so much for all your support these past few years. I see your love in Sam’s smile every day, and I feel it in my heart. I am extremely lucky to be spending my life with you.

Thanks, Susan, for hosting me today at your blog!