From Loretta:
I didn’t notice when the new refrigerator was delivered because I was typing as fast as I could to get my revisions done...
Then I caught a cold.
As Edith pointed out, we don’t get sick days.
I had to take one anyway, thereby losing a day of work and having to beg for blog assistance. Pat leapt to my rescue and filled in for me last Saturday, for which I give thanks And virtual flowers.
The revision dementia ended in another dawn-to-midnight marathon. The work got done, and sent in. I collapsed.
Some days I ask myself, Why am I doing this?
Like the line in the Laurie Anderson song, when her brain says to her, “Why don’t you get a real job?”
All of which makes now as good a time as any to answer Susannac’s questions--or at least some of them. Or part of some of them, because complete answers belong in the autobiography I hope never to write.
<<As for questions, my biggest one (okay, related collection) for the Wenches is:
How did you all go from zero to published? Did you futz about with it for years before buckling down to write a whole novel? Or did you decide one day, "I'm going to write a novel", and voila! finished it 3-6-9 months later? What did you use to learn the craft - college classes? Books? Critique partner/group? Trial and error? Which is harder for you - character or plot? How many completed manuscripts did you have before you sold? Is getting published the first time different today than when you first published?>>
I decided one day, when I was in high school, “I’m going to write a novel.” That went on for decades, for pages and pages in spiral notebooks (yes, we Wenches have much in common). In between working on this Great American Novel Without End, I had various lives. I was an English major in college. But I wanted to be involved in fashion. No, never mind; I wanted to be an artist. I was one, too, for a while--complete with actual exhibitions, and a work in a statewide juried show. 
Meanwhile, trying to earn my daily bread via this job and that, I ended up with a multifaceted job in academe, in an arts department, surrounded by artists, performers, composers, historians. I wrote the usual administrative paperwork and p.r. I even taught (badly). I helped on a theater project for one prof, helped run an art gallery, typed some dissertations. In short, lots of creative stimulation everywhere I looked.
The job also offered connections. Among other things, it led to my writing scripts for corporate video. Actual pay! For writing! And while this freelance work had its aggravations, as all jobs do, it was fun. I didn’t care what I had to write about: sandpaper, drilling rigs, safety equipment, filing systems. It was a chance to work with words, to make something out of nothing with words. And get paid for it! Did I mention actually getting paid? Too, it was a great challenge to take an ostensibly boring subject (i.e., plastic tubing) and try to make the words turn it into something interesting--or even funny, sometimes. I wrote for some living history museums and other cultural organizations as well.
Whatever the topic, I tended to find it fascinating, exciting, even. Picture the Crocodile Hunter (and oh, I shall miss him!) and you have a good idea of my outlook; though, being a shy person, I was less ebullient than he. This ability to wax enthusiastic about something simply because one is writing about it is very useful to writers. Spending so much of our lives alone, living in our heads, we need to provide our own excitement, applause, laughter, tears--as well as conversations with people who are not there.
So when I did finally settle down to follow my bliss, as Joseph Campbell so aptly put it, I had years of experience in things like sustaining my own interest, along with pacing and dialogue and getting the point across quickly, not to mention DEADLINES. I also had experience in making something out of nothing: Clients rarely had a clear idea of what exactly they wanted to accomplish, let alone an outline, so I learned what questions to ask, and how to build from odds and ends of ideas (in turn building on what I learned as a visual artist). For good or ill, it’s my current technique. My mind is not now, never was, and never will be linear. I’m either trying to make a Something out of scraps of this and that or trying to make order out of chaos.
No creative writing courses in my life--but lots of papers in college in addition to the writing described above. I read Writers Digest for years, from cover to cover, and all of Lawrence Block’s books on writing novels. But equally important, I had been a reader all my life, and probably absorbed at least a little by osmosis.
No critique partners, either. But after the first book was done, I did give it to my secretary--who was English, lucky me--and she helped me with British usage, as well as a great deal else.
I had partners in my work, though. Always have. Many of them, including my Princess and the Pea sister . For now, though, to keep this from turning into my autobiography, I’ll just point to my husband, with whom I’d worked on numerous video projects. He urged me to follow my dream. Strongly urged. OK, he nagged. Thanks to his unflagging er- encouragement, the first novel did get finished in about two years--while I was still working in academe and freelancing in video.
At the time, several publishers still accepted unagented submissions and a great many were putting out traditional Regencies--definitely a different world from today. I sent my first book ISABELLA over the transom, and promptly started writing another, as Writers Digest recommended. A few months later, to my very great astonishment (because Writers Digest had taught me to expect many rejections before acceptance) the editor called and asked me if the book was “still available.” Wasn’t that sweet? As though the publishing houses were trying to break down my door. 
As in Susan/Sarah’s case, my process was long and meandering, but once the book went in, things happened quickly. I, too, am glad I knew as little as I did at that point. It’s like my feelings about Georgette Heyer. If I’d read her before I wrote my first couple of Regencies, I wouldn’t have had the temerity. Even now--in spite of surviving deadline madness and wanting a long stay in a sanitarium--how I got from there to here still amazes me.
Or maybe not. Maybe it’s the ability to survive such things, to have the temerity, that makes the difference. I don’t know. What do you think?