I would say my biggest challenge is being low income, as a result of writing even though my novels don’t generate enough income to justify the time/energy investment.
Self-promotion is also a big emotional challenge. My low income status (very small social security check) is a threat to my ability to keep writing novels: possibly having to find a part time job to make ends meet; and worry/anxiety about money that can make a person feel depressed.
I am hoping to keep writing. Life is short and there are stories to tell.
Balance Helps with Everything
I am pretty good at living on a shoestring, thankfully. I balance my time between the solitude at home writing and being out and about with community members and friends.
I believe that balance helps, always and with everything. Talking with friends is a great way to cope, and so is kissing my sweet black lab a lot. I feel that hanging out with one’s black lab in any way, but especially camping, is a fantastic way to maintain mental health wellness!
Balancing between solitude and socializing helps me appreciate my time alone and helps me enjoy the writing process more.
Fear and Anxiety Ruin My Creativity
Writing is such a sedentary activity. I have painful heels, am way too heavy, and have neck problems. I love to write on my laptop while sitting in my recliner. That’s not the best position for my neck!
I wish I was more energetic as a writer, in general. I wish I could write for long hours and produce fiction more quickly. I think my morning coffee helps my creativity, believe it or not. Or maybe it’s just a question of energy.
I think fear/anxiety ruin my creativity.
I Have Many Stories from My Life I’d Like to Get Recorded
Of course I’ve wondered why I keep writing! It’s the hardest work in the world, and it doesn’t pay very well unless you hit the big time.
I wish I enjoyed the process more, instead of feeling like my head is being turned inside out. Plus, I’m too sedentary.
Why do I keep writing? All I can think of is the famous line from “Alice in Wonderland” … Why not? But seriously, I am 68 years old… I have many stories from my life I would like to get recorded as scenes in novels.
It’s Amazing When Your Character Takes On a Life of Her Own
I would say my greatest triumph as a writer was the creation of the Native American character, Birdie, in my first novel, Spirited Away – A Novel of the Stolen Irish.
I didn’t plan to have her be such a major character in that novel and especially in the sequel, Daring Passage.
As I wrote Spirited Away, Birdie took on a life of her own and practically wrote herself. It was an amazing feeling.
I wish this sort of thing would happen to me more often.
Advice for a Young Writer: Learn How to Live on a Shoestring
I would say, learn how to live on a shoestring, how to work odd jobs, travel, and be adventurous.
I would warn him/her that chances are he/she would not be able to make an actual living as a writer/artist, so plan for that.
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Maggie Plummer is a multi-genre author based in northwest Montana. Along the winding trail, she has worked as a journalist, editor, school bus driver, Good Humor ice cream girl, fishing boat mate, and race horse hot walker, among other things.
Her latest novel, Bell-Bottom Gypsy, follows young Jessie Morgan as she drops out in the early 1970s and wanders the back roads of America in a VW bug convertible.
Spirited Away – A Novel of the Stolen Irish, Maggie’s first novel, was a Quarter-Finalist in the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards and a 2013 finalist in The Kindle Book Review’s Best Indie Book Awards.
Daring Passage: Book 2 of the Spirited Away Saga tells the rest of the Spirited Away story. Readers call it “a stunning sequel.”
Maggie also penned a non-fiction book, Passing It On: Voices from the Flathead Indian Reservation, published by Salish Kootenai College Press (Pablo, Montana).
For more information on Maggie and her work, please see her website or Amazon author page, or connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.
Bell-Bottom Gypsy: In this galloping departure from her previous novels, author Maggie Plummer takes the reader on a wild 1970s ride – an adventurous coming of age journey along America’s back roads.
At twenty, Jessie Morgan is fed up with just about everything. It’s September 1971 – time to drop out, tune in, and turn on. She leaves college and Detroit in the rearview mirror, hitting the road in her 1965 yellow Volkswagen convertible. Wandering the country’s byways from Kentucky to Key West to Montana, Jessie is out to experience everything.
She didn’t count on meeting a man like Twisty.
Bell-Bottom Gypsy is recommended for mature readers due to plenty of 1970s-era sex, drugs, and cussing. Available on Amazon.
Spirited Away: In May 1653, young Frederica (Freddy) O’Brennan and her sister Aileen trust a stranger on an empty beach in western Ireland, inadvertently placing themselves in the crosshairs of Cromwell’s notorious Reign of Terror.
Freddy awakens in the crammed hold of a slave ship bound for Barbados. Ripped from their loved ones, she and Aileen manage to endure the gruesome voyage – only to be wrenched apart when purchased at auction by sugar plantation owners from different islands. Alone and far from her beloved homeland, Freddy faces the brutal realities of life as a female Irish slave on a seventeenth century Barbados sugar plantation. Amidst the island’s beauty, she must bear her treacherous Master using her as not only a kitchen drudge but his sex slave and, later, a breeding slave.
Heartsick, Freddy is forced to reach deep inside herself for strength. She is buoyed by powerful friendships with her fellow slaves – especially the Native American kitchen slave with whom she works in the plantation cookhouse.
Spirited Away – A Novel of the Stolen Irish paints an intimate, compelling portrait of 1650s Irish slavery in the Caribbean, and is recommended for mature readers. Available at Amazon.