By Michelle Griep, @MichelleGriep

Expect to fail. A lot.

But that doesn’t mean you’re a failure. It means your writing failed, which is good news because it provides you the opportunity to start over again.

Expect to rage about technology.

It’s inevitable you will lose some copy. Sometimes a lot. A glitch will happen and whammo! Fried motherboard or mega-virus or you find outKyloRen used the force on your dang computer. At some point you will have to recreate lost copy and that’s okay because it just might be better the second time around.

Expect to feel like quitting.

Everyone does. Every writer frequently thinks their writing is a heap of fresh elephant excretion. But just because you feel it doesn’t mean you have to act on it. Shoot. I feel like eating an entire batch of chocolate chip cookie dough practically every day but I don’t. Well, sometimes I do, but hey, I’m human.

Expect to dance on mountaintops and lie belly-up in valleys.

The writing life is a rollercoaster. Victories walk hand-in-hand with defeats. It’s kind of like being bipolar but without medication.

Expect to lower your expectations.

Every starry-eyed writer starts out with dreams of seeing his books on the shelves, contracts galore, and adoring fans busting down Barnes & Noble doors to snag a signed copy of his latest bestseller. Yeah. About that?Uh, nope. After a few years, those dreams dumb-down into something more manageable, like maybe getting your mom to read your latest manuscript.

Expect to work your fanny off.

Writing is not glamorous. It’s shutting yourself off from the world and diving into a pretend story land. And once the story is finally written, you get to edit and edit then edit some more. Then there’s marketing and squeaking in craft books and workshops so you can write even better.

Expect satisfaction.

True, there are a lot of negatives in a writer’s life, but when that one reader contacts you and tells you what a difference your story made in their life . . . ahh. There’s nothing quite like that feeling. Own it.

The Innkeeper’s Daughter

Dover, England, 1808: Officer Alexander Moore goes undercover as a gambling gentleman to expose a high-stakes plot against the king—and he’s a master of disguise, for Johanna Langley believes him to be quite the rogue. . .until she can no longer fight against his unrelenting charm.

All Johanna wants is to keep the family inn afloat, but when the rent and the hearth payment are due at the same time, where will she find the extra funds? If she doesn’t come up with the money, there will be nowhere to go other than the workhouse—where she’ll be separated from her ailing mother and ten-year-old brother.

Alex desperately wants to help Johanna, especially when she confides in him, but his mission—finding and bringing to justice a traitor to the crown—must come first, or they could all end up dead.

Michelle Griep’s been writing since she first discovered blank wall space and Crayolas. She is the author of historical romances: The Innkeeper’s Daughter, 12 Days at Bleakly Manor, The Captive Heart, Brentwood’s Ward, A Heart Deceived, Undercurrent andGallimore, but also leaped the historical fence into the realm of contemporary with the zany romantic mystery Out of the Frying Pan. If you’d like to keep up with her escapades, find her at www.michellegriep.com or stalk her on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.the next level.