Refusal? What refusal?

It's true. I need to learn to say no - to myself more than to anyone.

My imagination runs wild. I consistently take on too many projects.
(www.blazeauthors.com - www.alisonkent.com - www.isabelsharpe.com)
I have more story ideas than I'll ever have time to write.
(see: Books!)
But . . . I wouldn't have it any other way!

So, why would any sane person even consider refusing the call. For one thing, life is never again the same. (See: Mica's Ordinary World.) Not only is there the question of balancing one's lives (home, work, family, etc.), one tends to live in "publishing time". Instead of the Four Seasons, a published author lives through creation and submission, deadline and revision.

Oh, and let's not forget promotion. Web sites and reviews and signings and online chats.

Sounds like a good reason to not only say, "No!", but to run screaming into the night, yes? And, at times, screaming does happen. It's a hard life to live, a razor's edge tightrope to walk between sanity and insane. I once had a published friend tell me she knew her writing was as much a curse as a blessing when she came close to forgetting her son's eleventh birthday while she was on deadline.

I did NOT miss my daughter's 17th birthday this year, but she did make her own pumpkin bars. I did NOT miss my son's 22nd birthday, but his sister did make his pineapple upside down cake.

Don't think it could never happen. Because it can. And the reverse can happen as well.

On August 31, 2001, I had just started the third book of a three-book series. Which meant I wasn't much past chapter one on September 11th. Like so many others, I found myself faced with a supreme struggle. How in the world was I supposed to have the mental clarity to write a light-hearted love story when the world had changed forever?