And it was Fun. I relaxed. Things were better at work because when someone annoyed me I had this gorgeous world I could retreat into for a few moments, where I Was Completely In Charge. Most of the time. Until my characters became real to me and started answering back. But that didn’t matter. It was still My World. It was still Fun.
In those days I wrote swiftly and joyously, straight onto the computer. Even though I was working full time and had various other commitments, the whole thing was done, all 60 000 words of it, in about six months. At that point I sent it to a friend—that’s Meg. Blame her if you don’t like my books. She loved that book and persuaded me to send it in to Harlequin.
And I got published. After a major rewrite and extension. So then, I told myself, I had a new career. But it was still Fun. I was still Playing. Because by then the biological time clock had turned into a bomb, exploded, and we had Babies. So the writing was still for me. Something I rushed off to for a mental break when the boys were asleep, or on their one day a week in daycare. And I could write two books a year. Easy. Amazing.
Then, after a few minutes, the boys grew up. Well that’s what it seemed like. One was at school and the other was at pre-school. And I said to myself, “That’s it. You’re a full-time writer now. You have all the time in the world. Five days a week. Nine till three. Go to it. Two books a year. Go get ’em, Lassie!’
And I got writer’s block. Everything I wrote felt and sounded like rubbish. I gave myself Permission to Write Rubbish. I wrote Rubbish. And then I stared at a blank screen and became more and more depressed. And a few crappy reviews didn’t help. I wondered how the hell I’d ever gotten published.
My editor asked me to write a Christmas novella, which I did. I had quite a few interruptions over that, and couldn’t always be at the computer, so a lot got written in notebooks and typed up later. Funnily enough, that seemed to work quite well, and some of my confidence returned. But it’s not an efficient way to work, is it? So I bought a second-hand Alpha smart from Presents author Trish Morey. I thought getting out of the office might help and most writers I know swear by Alphies, including Trish. Didn’t work for me. The small screen made it hard for me to keep the thread of the story. I tried for ages with the Alphie, but ended up scribbling scenes in a notebook and typing them up later.
And I continued to struggle at the computer with the book that became A Compromised Lady. Eventually I had about 80,000 words of disconnected, and uneven story. Some was good, mostly the stuff I’d written in notebooks. Some didn’t fit and some was just terrible. I also had quite a bit of the book I’m finishing up now.
That had flowed quite well onto the computer when I started it as a change from A Compromised Lady. With my editor’s encouragement and a lot of inefficient scribbling I got A Compromised Lady finished. Are you seeing a pattern yet?
Recently I went off for my annual conference hit. This year the Australian conference was in Sydney, and afterwards I went to the New Zealand conference for the first time. We had the great privilege of having Jenny Crusie and Anne Stuart at both conferences, and something Jenny said in one of her workshops explained to me what had been wrong for the past three years.
I’d forgotten that writing was supposed to be Fun. Play. Creative. By sitting in front of this damn screen day after day, telling myself that this was my job now and I had to do it, had completely frozen out what Jenny calls The Girls In The Basement. What some of us refer to as The Muse. I like The Girls In The Basement, myself. They sound like wicked, gossipy, old ladies who tell the snarkiest stories about everyone they know. I digress. I’d locked the door on The Girls. Occasionally they’d managed to get a message through to me. Mostly when I wasn’t at the computer, or when I’d switched off the manuscript designated as Work for the time being.
Talk about light bulb moments. It was like the entire Electricity Trust of South Australia went off inside my head. I remembered all those great scenes I’d written in notebooks and typed up later. When I wrote, literally wrote, the ideas and words poured out. Got a word wrong? I’d polish it as I typed. Got a paragraph in the wrong place? Use an arrow to show where it ought to go. Inefficient way to work? Not as inefficient as staring at that blank screen.
And you know what? The stuff I’ve written since I got home is great. She says immodestly. At least it’s flowing again. My writing is Fun again. There’s no logic to it, and there doesn’t have to be. I can write this blog at the keyboard easily because for some reason it isn’t Work.
So I guess the moral of the story is; Discover your own creative process, and Don’t Mess With It. I spent three years fighting my own process. I knew damn well that the stuff I wrote in notebooks generally worked, sometimes with a bit of tweaking. But it wasn’t Efficient. To hell with Efficient. I’ve written about 8,000 words in notebooks the last couple of days and typed most of them up too. And you know what? It was Fun.
—Elizabeth Rolls
www.elizabethrolls.com
#49
The truth is, many authors say they have the greatest job in the world (and I’m among them)…and then complain about how painful it is, how agonizing it is when things just aren’t going right (and I’m among that breed too!). So are we suckers for punishment, or are we truly enjoying ourselves?
While it’s true everyone needs a break to “fill the well”, writing isn’t like other jobs. In fact it really isn’t a job at all, and if it is then you’re not doing it right. You have to treat it like a job…write regularly, take it seriously, and also look after the business side of it…but the process isn’t a job. You can call it a calling, a trait, whatever works for you. For me writing is simply a part of me. Mix that part of me with the part that needs to be right and you get creative energy plus tenacity.
When a book is accepted, or a reader writes to say how they enjoyed it, you know why you put yourself through it. You do it because you can’t imagine doing anything else.
But ultimately, why I keep writing is why I write Romance to begin with. For the hope. For the rush of falling in love and for the feeling that happy endings DO happen—and being able to relive them over and over again. For me there’s nothing greater.
—Donna Alward
www.donnaalward.com
#50
I have to admit that being a writer is the greatest job in the world! How many people actually get to do what they love everyday? I have traveled and met some of the most incredible people, I have made friends that will last me a lifetime, and each time I sit down with my pen or in front of my computer I know that the words that come from me, will eventually touch someone out in the world and impact them in some way—and you know—that’s an awesome feeling.
—Donna Hill
www.donnahill.com
#51
For me, writing is like breathing. It’s what I do. I wake up with characters in my head, telling me their stories, and I can’t not write them down.
But all writers have days when they don’t feel like sitting in front of the computer and putting words down. Days when they feel everything they’ve written is rubbish and they’ll never have another decent idea, ever—known as an attack of the crows of doubt. (For me, this always happens when I’m waiting for my editor’s verdict on a book!)
And that’s when three things help me keep going.
Firstly, reader letters. One I particularly treasure is from a reader who told me when she’s having a really awful day, she reads one of my books and comes away feeling much happier and that the world is a good place after all. How many jobs allow you to do that? That really makes me want to keep writing—to keep putting sunshine into people’s lives like that.
Secondly, deadlines. I write for two Harlequin lines (Medicals and Modern Extra) so at three books each per year I’m writing a book every two months. Knowing that my editor expects my book is a good way to keep me working.)
And the best way to make sure I deliver on time is my third thing: routine. I write every day, and once you g
et into the habit of writing a certain amount each day it really does help keep you going in times when you’re maybe not feeling quite so creative. It’s a lot easier to edit a bad page than a blank page.
Because of my deadlines, my personal book routine works out as:
One week’s thinking time (to clear the last characters from my head and get to know the new characters)
Five weeks to write
A week to mess about while I’m waiting to hear (that’s also thinking time for the new book)
A week to do the revisions (and still think about the new book)…and then we’re back at the beginning of the cycle: move on from my last hero and heroine, and start working with the new ones I’ve got to know.
Breaking that down a bit further: keeping the weekends free as family time (though reserving the right to borrow time if things go wrong!), that gives me 5 weeks to write a book at 5 working days a week, or 25 days. 50,000 words divided by 25 days equals 2,000 a day.
(If that seems scary to you, try something smaller: 500 words a day will give you a book in a little over three months.)
—Kate Hardy
www.katehardy.com
#52
Why do I write? That’s sort of like asking Paris Hilton why she poses for the paparazzi. It’s simply what I do.
What keeps me motivated? That one’s a little more complex and not quite so easily explained.
First of all, I’m a story teller. Everyone is fair game for a star role in own little bit of fiction. You know the cute guy in line at the supermarket with a can of whipped cream and a single rose—hey, that one’s a no-brainer.
The man getting on the plane with two little kids - he has a story. He might be a single dad whose wife left him for her proctologist, or perhaps he’s kidnapping the little darlings. Who knows? The fun part comes from letting your imagination take you to new worlds. I do it all the time, and I have to say it makes my husband crazy, especially when we’re hanging out in airports.
My first book was the result of a little “eavesdropping” on the conversation of a group of 70+ seniors on their way to Las Vegas. I was struck by what unlikely villains they would be. So how did some perfectly innocent guys in John Deere baseball hats morph into a gang of killers from the Twisted Oaks Retirement Community? Easy, I gave them a new motivation. In my world they ran drugs in Vietnam. As they got older, they started worrying (read that became scared spitless) about an up close and personal with Saint Peter. So in order to get a few “brownie points” they decided to get rid of the current crop of bad guys. And just for grins they froze the bodies. See how easy that was. I’ll never forget the day I asked a pediatrician friend how long you had to thaw a dead body before it would float. The look on her face was priceless!
The second thing that keeps me going is that I love to make people laugh. I know exactly what you’re thinking. Puleeze, you say—how can a frozen body be funny? It’s all a matter of perspective and presentation. Humor can be found everywhere. You just have to look for it. It also helps to have laughter in your soul.
—Ann DeFee
www.ann-defee.com
#53
What keeps me writing? That’s a great question and one my writer friends and I have been talking about lately. For me, the short answer is “to get to the ending.” The same thing that keeps me reading a book. The ending—the big ‘awww…’ (spoken as if you’re looking at a newborn baby or a tiny kitten or puppy.)
When I come up with an idea for a book, usually it’s the wrap-up of the emotional story, what a lot of people call the denouement, that I get first. For instance, in A FATHER’S SACRIFICE, October 2007, Harlequin Intrigue, my idea grew from the concept of a widowed father whose little boy’s only chance to walk again is the neurological interface he’s working on for the military. Problem is, a domestic terrorist group wants to get its hands on the technology to sell to the highest bidder.
My vision was to have the father, the child and the beautiful computer expert the government sent in to protect the interface, walking out of a dark tunnel into the light.
So, as happens with every books, I had the ending. I just had to write the book.
—Mallory Kane
www.mallorykane.com
#54
One of the things that drives me, drives every writer I suspect, is the impossibility of a book, any book, ever matching the soaring vision in your head, in your heart. I once said to an editor, after a book had gone through acquisition, had been accepted for publication, that I wished I done something more with a particular scene.
“Next time,” she said. “Do it in the next book.”
We both knew she wasn’t talking about that particular scene. She was telling me that next time I’d get closer. And that’s what keeps me writing. The goal of the perfect book. A book that, when I take it out of the box and read it through to check that all my corrections have made it through the final copy edit stage, doesn’t leave me with that feeling that I could have done something more in any one of a dozen places. That I could have done better.
It’s never going to happen of course. No writer is ever completely satisfied with the finished result and, since I get more critical with experience, not less so, I’ll always have to keep writing, always seeking an illusive perfection.
—Liz Fielding
www.lizfielding.com
http://lisfielding.blogspot.com
#55
I write because I’m compelled to tell stories, most specifically stories that celebrate the independence, intelligence, and power of today’s women. My mind is always restlessly creating plots and characters and opening scenes. Even when I’m trying to take a break between books and “rest” (which means I catch up on my TBR pile and watch a bunch of trash TV), my imagination is composing pieces of my next book. I don’t feel whole when I’m not writing.
—P. C. Cast
www.pccast.net
#56
I’ve tried to quit writing several times.
I remember a few years back I was in tears because after years of begging my publisher to take on my NASCAR series, they’d said no. I’d poured my heart and soul into my first NASCAR story and so it felt like a personal rejection when they turned me down.
It got worse.
One day, not long after that rejection (I mean DAYS), I sat down at a luncheon sponsored by this publisher and there, lying on the table in front of me, was a flyer for a new book by a new author. Guess what the series was about? Go on…guess. Yup. NASCAR. I was crushed. I’d been trying for two years to sell my series, and to be passed over for another author, well, I was ready to throw in the towel.
I didn’t.
I didn’t because, ultimately, I write for my fans—not my publisher. I’m sure other authors feel the same way, but it’s amazing how every time I think about quitting, I get a letter that spurs me on. I’ve had readers tell me my books have gotten them through heart surgery. One reader said my stories helped her through a nasty divorce. Just recently someone told me TOTAL CONTROL helped them to see how precious and rare life was. I write because I love creating stories that move people.
Ultimately, this is a calling, and when it comes right down to it, it’s a calling I just can’t ignore.
—Pamela Britton
www.pamelabritton.com
#57
What keeps a writer going? Well obviously, now that we’re half-way through the month, the answers to that question are as varied as the amazing stories written by our team of Blog Bash authors. As simple as the question, “Would you stop if you could?” As complex as, “How do you keep describing the world around you, so it comes to life for your readers?”
We’re writers. We create art by telling stories. We keep writing because we can’t help ourselves. We either share the realities that live in our heads, or we paint them with words that no one will see (don’t get me started on my personal stash of poetry NO ONE will ever read). Regardless, we write.
Why? Because we’r
e freakish that way. If we could stop, we would. If we were happy just writing for ourselves, we’d have been satisfied with that. And you know what that means…What keeps us coming back to the craziness of creating on publishing deadline, is you—the readers. So, basically, our sleepless nights and hours of pouring over the same phrase or character to get it JUST right (all that obsessive, compulsive stuff that our therapists worry about, but aren’t really sure how to treat) is all YOUR fault;o)
And we thank you.
—Anna DeStefano
www.annawrites.com
#58
A couple of weeks ago, I cleaned out my bedroom closet. It was one of those once-a-year, pile–everything-on-the-floor, where-the-hell-did-that-come-from events, which I don’t plan to repeat any time soon. Among the mounds of ill-fitting jeans, old photographs, and receipts for fast food I no longer remember eating, I found a box of old correspondence my grandmother gave me years ago, including a letter to her from my parents, written when I was a baby. The letter said that my hair was getting really thick, I was turning over on my own, and I already loved books of all kinds, even the ones with no pictures.
The letter was dated November, 1978. I was five months old.
My hair didn’t stay very thick. However, I can still turn over on my own, and I definitely still love books.
My parents are both avid readers, and I don’t remember either of them ever not being in the middle of a book. Sometimes two or three at once. I literally cut my teeth on my mother’s college textbooks. I learned to read when I was four, and taught my sister to read a year later. But I didn’t truly understand the power of the written word until I realized I could harness that power for myself. I wrote my first story when I was five, and I haven’t looked back since.
A Valentine for Harlequin's Anniversary Page 7
