Translating Innate Talents into Writing Success

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving with good food, great company, and lots of laughter and good cheer! My Thanksgiving was fabulous. We spent it with some close friends (who are like family), rather than my huge extended family. It’s been a rough year for many and that includes both our friends and us. It was an excellent time to celebrate the good and important things we do have and most have little to do with material things. I came home this evening feeling content and well fed. 


Hope you did too!

My guest today is historical (set in the Georgian era)romance author, Emery Lee. Her discussion centers on being thankful for her writing career and the steps that lead up to it. She also includes a link for the Clifton Strengths Finder test and how she uses her strengths in her writing. 

My writing career has been a very roundabout path. In fact, even five years ago, I could have more easily imagined myself as a Jeopardy contestant than a published author. A writing career is something I could never have imagined in my wildest fantasies. How did it happen?

Since this blog is very much about writers’ journeys, I thought it would be interesting to share a very unique personal experience that served to guide my path as well as validating my decision to pursue a full time writing career.

Five years ago, as an initiative to more fully develop the potential of its workforce, my former employer required all management level employees to complete a talent assessment tool.

The stated purpose was to evaluate each managers’ natural talents in order to promote personal and career success. I was highly skeptical when I completed the on-line questionnaire, but upon receiving the results, I was stunned.

EMERY LEE’S FIVE KEY “THEMES” From Clifton StrengthsFinder http://www.strengthstest.com/theme_summary.php

StrategicTM	People strong in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.
Achiever®	People strong in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive.
Responsibility®	People strong in the Responsibility theme take psychological ownership of what they say they will do. They are committed to stable values such as honesty and loyalty.
Input®	People strong in the Input theme have a craving to know more. Often they like to collect and archive all kinds of information.
Intellection®	People strong in the Intellection theme are characterized by their intellectual activity. They are introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions.

Wow! What a wake-up call! These results implied I’d wasted twenty years of my life in a completely incompatible job! No wonder I was miserable!

But what did this REALLY mean?

While I had already begun writing my first novel at this time, as purely a creative outlet from my stifling job, these results served to validate that writing was the right path for me. This is how I translated my individual themes into my writing career:

·       Strategic means I have the ability to think a story through, to examine it from all angles – to plot with complexity.

·        Achievement means I have an innate need to always finish what I start or die trying.

·        Responsibility keeps me on deadline.

·      Input applies fabulously to historical fiction as this theme allows me to spend tireless hours researching even the smallest details for my stories.

·      Intellection – the love of thinking allows me to give myself over completely to my imagination

Realizing these individual strengths/themes has helped my writing career by enabling me to focus on what I do best, and in doing so, I have discovered more personal satisfaction that I have never known before. 

• Whether you be a writer or not, what are some of your strengths and how do they help you to be successful?

FORTUNE'S SON available now in print and ebook.

Love is the ultimate gamble...

Seasoned gambler Philip Drake knows every trick and uses most of them. After years of infamy, he's ready to accept the mantle of respectability with his earldom-- until a devastating racing loss and the threat of debtors' prison force Philip right back into his gaming ways...

Susannah, Lady Messingham, is a woman with a past who refuses to belong to any man again. But Philip's skill catches her eye and she persuades him to teach her how to win at the tables. Their new partnership turns into an exhilarating high-stakes game that entangles them in terrifying risk and unimaginable rewards...

Immerse yourself in the risky side of Georgian England with a pair of lovers who aren't afraid to risk it all on a toss of the dice...

BUY:  AMAZON, BARNES AND NOBLE, BOOKS-A-MILLION, INDIEBOUND

Emery Lee is a lifelong equestrienne and history buff 
who loves nothing more than a romantic story that also provides 
food for the intellect.

Her debut novel THE HIGHEST STAKES is an epic tale of star-cross 
lovers set in the high stakes world of 18th century horse racing. In 
FORTUNE’S SON, Emery spins a web of drama, passion, and deceit
deep in the world of high stakes gaming.

You can find Emery: Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads 

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Favorite Ways to Unwind

Highest Stakes

By: Emery Lee
Publisher: Sourcebooks
Price: $15.99
Publication Date: April 2010

Synopsis:

When Captain Robert Devington returns home from war, this hero's only thought is to win the girl he has loved since first spied her riding hell-for-leather across the Doncaster heath.

In a desperate scheme to win her, he proposes an outrageous racing wager, a wager for love. The horse race, a nail-biter, sets the plot in motion.

In a shocking twist of fate, he loses his love, the life he knew, and his country, but with the passage of time comes the opportunity for retribution.

In the end, the good ultimately triumph, the wicked get their just deserts, and the not-quite-so-wicked are given the chance for redemption. Love, of course, conquers all.

I'm please to welcome Debut author, Emery Lee, Over Coffee. I was curious how she relaxed, especially after a long day of writing. Her answer surprised me.

• What are some of your favorite ways to unwind after writing?

My Twitter response would be: With a steaming cup of Twinings Lady Grey!

My expanded answer might be something altogether different:
While I have several hobbies I greatly enjoy: reading, riding my horse, and even playing the Celtic harp, I can’t say that I ever need to unwind after writing as writing is how I unwind!

My literary adventure first began nearly three years ago as a badly needed outlet for pent up creative energy. At the time, I was in a very stressful job under a boss who allowed me little freedom or opportunity to exercise creative thinking. It was this frustration in my professional life which initially drove me to explore writing, though I never dreamed it would ever come to fruition.



I have always enjoyed a great book to the point that I might easily have ignored the world collapsing about my head while buried in one, but this absorption magnified tenfold once I found my story in The Highest Stakes and began writing.



Writing for me is such a fantastic sensation—to create, to paint with words the pictures you see in your mind’s eye, to imagine characters and breathe life into them, to instilling in them the thoughts and emotions that emanate from your own soul.



I have never experienced in any other activity the powerful sensations that I discovered in writing.


Time ceases to exist.

Reality fades to black.

The universe becomes my own creation, one that I can mold and shape to my will.

All things imaginable become possible.

Writing for me has become the most liberating experience I can ever describe.
Now, would you care for one lump or two?

• To readers and writers: How do you unwind?

We have 2 copies of The Highest Stakes to award to 2 people who comment today. US and Canada only. Be sure to leave me a way to contact you.

~*~*~*~*~

A bit of Background:

• 
  All thoroughbred horses in the world to this very day can trace their blood back to three specific Arabian stallions imported to England in the early part of the 18th century. Against this backdrop comes a painstakingly researched novel with breathtaking scenes of real races, real horses, glimpses of the men who cared for them, and the tensions of those who owned and controlled them.
• 
  In 18th century England and Colonial Virginia, when high-spirited stallions filled the stables of the lords of the land and fortunes were won and lost on the outcome of a race, a love story unfolds between a young woman for whom her uncle's horses are her only friends and the young man who teaches her everything about their care and racing. When she's forced into marriage, his only hope of winning her back is to race his horse to reclaim all that was stolen from him—his land, his dignity, and his love.

Read a Chapter Excerpt

Reviews of High Stakes

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Emery Lee is a life-long equestrienne, a history buff, and a born romantic. Combine the three and you have the essence of her debut novel: a tale of love, war, politics, and horseracing. A member of Romance Writers of America, she lives with her husband, sons, and two horses in upstate South Carolina.





For more information, please visit http://authoremerylee.com/.