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Author Tells How She Juggles Kids, Writing Career
By Craig Pinley
OKLAHOMA CITY, OK (April 4, 2003) - Rene Gutteridge of Westmoore Community
Covenant Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, has had her second book,
Troubled Waters, released by Bethany House Publishers.
Gutteridge, whose husband, Sean, is worship minister at the church,
published a fiction work called Ghost Writer in 2000. A third novel,
Boo, will also be published in the coming months. Gutteridge earned
a Mass Communications degree from Oklahoma City University, graduating
magna cum laude. She served as the full-time director of drama at First
United Methodist Church in Oklahoma City for five years, publishing more
than 20 pieces as a playwright and creating and directing 500 pre-sermon
sketches that were performed for church worship. Besides writing and caring
for her two children, Gutteridge is an occasional instructor at writer
conferences and college writing courses.
Following is a portion of a recent interview with Gutteridge, covering her
new career and her ongoing juggling act of raising children and writing
books.
Pinley: How did you get started writing in the first place?
Gutteridge: I've been writing since I was a kid. I always loved
being creative and when my parents bought me my first Apple computer, it
really took off. I wrote all kinds of stories. In high school I began
researching how to write screenplays and then went to college and studied
screenwriting. It was there that my professor suggested I try
writing a novel. I wasn't that interested at first, but once I did it I
really enjoyed it.
Pinley: What were the circumstances surrounding the publishing of
your first book?
Gutteridge: God works in mysterious ways! I remember being pregnant
with
John, my first child, and praying that the Lord would direct me. I wasn't
published yet, and it didn't seem like I ever would be. There were
rejections and semi-rejections and people saying, "this is a great story,"
but for one reason or another not offering a contract. I felt like I was
at a dead end. One night, very late, I got out of bed and just prayed to
the Lord that His will would be done. If he wanted me to be a mom and
writer, I'd love that, but if he just wanted me to be a mom, I would accept
that, too. I gave it over to Him and felt like the weight of the world had
been lifted off my shoulders.
My son was five weeks old when I received the call every writer dreams of.
It was an editor from Bethany House who was calling to say they wanted to
offer me a contract on Ghost Writer. I was so excited and so scared!
I was a new mom, sleep deprived, a nervous wreck, AND I hadn't written the
story yet! I'd just given them a proposal of what the story would be. I had
seven months to write the book and by God's grace and with a lot of help
from my family, I did it. It was crazy, but I met my deadline.
Pinley: How did your most recent book get started?
Gutteridge: Troubled Waters was an idea I had in college. I
wrote the
entire manuscript for my final project. The church I worked for, First
United Methodist, sat next door to the Alfred P. Murrah building in
downtown Oklahoma City. When the bombing happened, I lost the disk that it
was on. Luckily I had a hard copy to turn in, but the disk disappeared in
all the chaos of the bombing and I never found it. It was in my office with
all my other things, but the FBI seized the building as a crime scene and
somewhere in the shuffle, things went missing. Several years later, I
pitched the idea to Bethany House and with a little revision and updating,
they offered a contract for it.
Pinley: What is the "method to the madness" in juggling writing and
parenting?
Gutteridge: As I've grown more confident as a mother, I'm able to
write a lot more consistently. I mostly write during nap time (for the two
children) or on the weekends when my husband is home. Sometimes I'll hire a
babysitter for the day if I'm close to a deadline. I try not to get too
attached to a schedule, because I'd go crazy trying to keep it. Kids are
really unpredictable, and so I just try to go with the flow and pray that I
meet all my deadlines. So far I haven't missed one. Probably the biggest
thing that has changed is that I've learned to be creative whenever I need
to, instead of writing when I feel inspired. Before children, I'd feel
creative here and there and write, and then back off when I wasn't feeling
creative. I don't have the luxury any more, so I've just trained myself to
write and be creative when necessary.
Copyright © 2008 The Evangelical Covenant Church. |
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