We never know what to expect in life. We can roll along without a care one day and find ourselves shattered the next. Even during times of physical hardship, writers can have obligations to fulfill. Lillian Duncan is a writer who has faced physical difficulty and written through it. I asked her:
"You've suffered with recent illness. How did you
find the desire to sit at the computer and complete your books?
Lillian: Life is about habits. After more
than fifteen years of writing almost every day, it’s a habit! And just the way
you don’t quite feel right when you don’t brush your teeth, that’s the way I
feel when I don’t write.
It was quite the shock for my
husband and me when I was diagnosed with bilateral brain tumors considering I
had no symptoms. We went to our camper with our dogs and I slept when I felt
like it, took walks with the dogs, and
ate marshmallows every night!
Out of habit, I took my laptop with
me.
At the time, I was working on
Betrayed, which will come out some time this year. While my husband was out
fishing, I would write. Most
of the story was finished and it only needed editing and polishing
As I said, writing is a habit for
me. It’s something I do because I love it. It’s fun for me. It gives me
pleasure.
And I really needed some pleasure
at the time—the marshmallows helped but the writing helped even more.
My best advice when you find
yourself struggling with a serious illness, is to go to God for advice. If you
feel a sense of peace about continuing to write, do so. If writing gives you
anxiety, then take a break.
Each person and their circumstances
are different. What worked for me won’t necessarily work for everyone.
If writing makes you feel better,
then write. If writing feels like an intrusion,
then don’t write.
I felt good physically until early
December when my complications set in. Some people (like my sister) thought I
was pushing myself and she was absolutely right.
But it had taken me more than
seventeen years to get my career to this point, and there was no way I was
going to let my brain tumors win. So, I kept writing as much as I could.
Some days it would only be an hour,
other days not at all.
God blessed me by giving me
complete retirement this year (of course, I didn’t think it was a blessing at
the time), but it shows that God always knows what He’s doing.
~~~
She lives in the middle of Amish country in Ohio with her husband and menagerie of pets, including four parrots, a Jack Russell Terrier and a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that she's thinking about renaming Clifford--since he continues to grow and grow and grow...
She's been a speech-language pathologist for over thirty years. Most of those years were in the Cleveland Municipal School district where she worked primarily with deaf and hard-of-hearing students.
As a writer, speech pathologist, and an educator, she believes in the power of words to change lives, especially God's Word.
