Red River Romance Writers

How Is It Possible? ©
By Mary Beth Lee

How is it possible to immerse yourself in the writing life, to work and rework words until they convey the exact message you think you want them to say and still one day wake up and feel like it's just not worth it and you want to quit?

I guess the question should read more like how is it not possible.

When I started writing, I truly thought my words were a divine gift of sort. I loved sitting down at my computer, playing God and toying with my characters.

Today, five years later, I can honestly say most days I still love that feeling of breathing life into fictional characters and settings. But I can also honestly say there are days I question why I bother. Sometimes, the dark thoughts come after throwing a book against the wall and wondering how on earth THAT got published. More often than not it's after closing a book and wondering if I'll ever be able to do what that author did.

Will I ever be able to suck readers in to a completely make believe fairy tale world where essentially boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back and they live happily ever after.

Sure that's trivializing the whole process, but that is the basic backbone of my favorite romances.

I knew when I read It Had to be You that Phoebe and Dan would fall in love. Even when it seemed like all hope was lost, I knew Susan Elizabeth Phillips would never devastate me and leave those two soul mates apart.

So what is it that keeps me reading book after book by my favorite authors? What is it that makes me dream of maybe one day touching people the way I've been touched. In some cases, Deborah Smith and Luanne Rice, it's the beautiful prose with which the author tells the story. I finish their books and know I'll never ever be able to write something that feels like a symphony of vowels and consonants, nouns and verbs.

With others, Catherine Mann and Jennifer Cruisie, it's the intricate plot that sucks me in. When I finish those books I wonder how I'll ever be able to write a book even close to that complicated, that wonderful.

The worst are those whose characters leap off the pages. Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Jo Beverly absolutely make me believe their characters are living, breathing people. I feel like I would know them if I met them on the street.

They're the worst because characterization is the one thing I feel confident about in my own writing, and my characterization doesn't come close to theirs. I doubt it ever will.

I've spent the last year looking for the magic bullet. Trying to find that guaranteed way to get THE CALL.

I've studied the market, I've pre-plotted, I've interviewed my characters. I can tell you in which chapter most Silhouette Desire characters finally consummate their relationship. I can give percentages of hero occupations for Silhouette Intimate Moments. I can even give an average number of secondary characters for Harlequin Americans.

I've finally decided none of that matters. At least not for me.

The only way I'll ever get that call is to write the stories that beg me to write them.

I'm done studying markets, but I'll definitely continue reading everything I can get my hands on. That's just me.

I'm not quitting, but I am going to work on my own style, my own way of writing, my personal plotting sessions that leave my family fully believing I'm a little insane. (Not necessarily a BAD thing)

I'll still look for interesting ideas for how to be a better writer. But I've realized there's no magic bullet, no guaranteed way to get THE CALL. The only answer is to write. To find my voice. To learn how best to tell my stories.

And on those days I wake up feeling like the worst sort of pretender, I'll just smile and tell myself there's nothing wrong with that. It's just another way to deepen my creative spirit.