Danielle Steele and the joy of working on many projects at the same time

Date: 18th April 2021, Posted by mollie

Dear friends,

Hasn’t it been a beastly time? All this bad news and lockins, lockouts and worrying about our health and our loved ones can drive us insane. I can relate to Danielle Steele who says she works on many projects at the same time to stay happy.

You can read one of many articles where she shares how she manages to be so prolific, “Danielle Steel On Raising 9 Kids, Writing 174 Books, “Authoritarian” Ex-Husbands, here>>.  

I especially loved her comments, “I write a lot of books. Sometimes I have an interview and it’s about a book I wrote ten months ago and I think, ‘Oh my god! What’s the story?’”

She is so prolific she is always jumping into the next book even while finishing her previous book. But she does confess being prolific does bring with it the extra work—and the need to sacrifice sleep. But writing and uplifting others via her stories makes her happy.

“It’s a vicious cycle. On the one hand, I work too much now. By the end of the day, I’m always writing. I stay up very late at night. Until three, sometimes four. I sleep about four hours a night, on average. But if I don’t work, then I’m sad. So I work more. I don’t have anything else in my life. It keeps me happy and busy. I’m not bored. I’m not depressed. It’s not such a great thing to work all the time. It’s profitable, but still. The one thing I don’t do well is sitting around relaxing.”

So rather than lose heart about all my loose threads my focus is on completing shorter books and staying busy. I don’t do sitting around and relaxing well either. And sometimes, because I have so many books on the go I wake in the night to write some more. Unlike Danielle, I do have a partner, and I love to spend time with him. So joining my nocturnal friends, the flightless Kiwis, I often wake up around 3am and spend an hour or two writing. I love the sacred silence.

One of my shorter books is my novella “Love Me As I Am” – Book four in the Seven Sister’s series.

This story was sparked by a true event—the tragic murder of a mother and one of her daughters in a small town near where I live. I wondered how would her death affect the children she left behind. How would it affect their lives? What if something good could come from this tragedy?

So I began to write a love story. For love is the only antidote to hate. Forgiveness, the only path to healing. And purpose the gift that can come from tragedy.

As with all of my books, some of the characters and events in the story were also inspired by true events in my own life. Including, when my paternal grandmother was channelled by a psychic. She asked my disbelieving and sceptical self, “Your grandmother says you don’t believe she is here. But she is holding out a flower, and she wants to know, she is present. She is asking, “Do you remember the jasmine flowers growing over the house?”

I didn’t.

But when I drove home I called into Araby Lodge, where my grandmother used to live and where until her death, she bred and trained her beloved horses. At the time my father lived in her house. I asked him, “What is that vine growing over the house?”

I didn’t want to tell him anything about what the psychic had said because I was still skeptical and I didn’t want to influence the answer. My father said, “Oh, that old jasmine vine? That’s been there forever.”

My heart nearly leaped out of my chest. It was at that point that I began to believe in spiritual and psychic phenomena, and in time, many years later, to awaken my own gifts.

I named the story, Love Me As I Am, for isn’t that the deepest love of all. To love and be loved unconditionally—weirdness, flaws, fears, insecurities, our beautiful uniqueness…and so much more.   These introductory novellas are currently published under the series: PASSION DOWN UNDER SASSY SHORT STORIES:

Book One: TWIST OF FATE
viewBook.at/TwistofFate

Book Two: LOVE ME FOREVER
viewBook.at/LoveMeForever

Book Three: FOREVER AND ALWAYS

getbook.at/ForeverandAlways

Book 5: The Lightkeeper’s Lover

5

getbook.at/LightkeepersLover

Book 6: Finding A Husband

To enjoy your copy from Amazon, click here>>