Marsha Cornelius – How They Did It

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Next up in our new series, How They Did It, is Marsha Cornelius, author of medical thrillers,  H10N1 and The Ups [image error] and Downs of Being Dead. 

After working for fifteen years as a cafeteria manager in an elementary school, Marsha Cornelius turned in her non-skid shoes for a bathrobe and slippers. She now works at home, writing novels, acting out scenes with her cats, and occasionally running a Swiffer across dusty surfaces.

Like thousands of others, she thought she could write romance, but soon discovered she was a dismal failure. She did increase her repertoire of adjectives such as throbbing, pulsing, thrumming, vibrating, hammering, pumping . . .

[image error]She resides in the countryside north of Atlanta with her husband. Her two grown sons occasionally visit for clean laundry and a hot cooked meal.

Q:  As with all of our authors who participate in this series, we ask a single question:  The odds of completing a novel can be astronomical.  Marsha, how did you do it?

A: I’d like to say something inspirational here, like ‘every time I felt like quitting, my husband urged me on’, or ‘it was my grandmother’s dying wish . . .’, but basically I had no choice.

Once the book was started, I couldn’t NOT finish it. I guess I was just driven to complete, not just one book, but three. (My third novel will be out this spring.)

Now that’s not to say that the finished, published novel H10 N1 is anything like the first version I wrote. But the characters’ names remained the same, and I think on page 23, I still used the term ‘neanderthal’. Pretty much everything else in the book went through several changes. And every time I pick up a copy, I see something else I’d like to fix.

Maybe that’s the trick. Don’t keep anguishing over every little thing. Just get it done! Then you can go back and tinker around all you want.

And don’t think you’re too busy to write. When I started my first book, I was raising kids, working full time, and getting up at 5:30 on the weekends to get a couple hours of writing done before anyone else was awake. If you’re a night owl, turn off that TV, and Facebook, and get busy.

The old saying is true: If you want it bad enough, you’ll do it.

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Marsha’s Author Page on Amazon

Buy Marsha’s Books

 H10N1

The Ups and Downs of Being Dead.