No Fear

I’ve spent the last year working on various projects and following the advice of “write what you love.” Still, I keep hitting roadblocks. Why? Why can’t I mentally get past these obstacles that are getting in the way of polishing my manuscript? Or allowing a new idea to flourish into an outline or plotted story? 

Perhaps I am slower than the rest, but it finally dawned on me that I keep falling into another trap that many writers face: playing it safe.

What I mean is that it’s easy to guard your imagination or ideas, keep them in check into these acceptable little boxes so they fit nicely into categories. It’s safe, and it’s not as messy. It keeps us in our comfort zone. But man, does it cripple any kind of potential a story might have.
 
I don’t have a fix or an easy solution. Just like it’s hard to shut up the inner editor in your had, it’s equally as hard to shut up all the other voices. (Thank goodness we’re writers, and we can get away with saying things like that.)
 
Just ask yourself when you’re plotting or outlining or reviewing or whatever process you have: is this as far as I can take my idea? Or am I afraid? What places can I take this story?
 
You might be surprised what you find. I know I was!

Write What You Love

Inspired by my friend Janet M. Carter’s post, I thought I would talk a bit about how my perception of writing has changed over time.

Finding your niche as a writer can be hard. There are so many pressures out there to conform. Follow the latest trends. Write what is popular. Who doesn’t want to be published?

With all these temptations pressing on you, it can be easy to lose your way and just write whatever you think will make people happy. Now, there’s nothing wrong with writing for money. There’s nothing wrong with writing popular themes or in popular genres. If you love it and your heart is in it, why not? Or hey, maybe you can write something you’re not passionate about, and it’s still amazing. There are writers who can do that.

I’m not one of them.

I find it problematic when you write without passion, and that’s exactly what I’ve tried to do in the past.

I’d find a call to submissions and think, hey I can write that! Not surprisingly, I would fail miserably.

Sometimes a call or a trend fits what I’m passionate about. What a great motivator! But more often than not, they aren’t compatible. Instead of chasing trends, I should be writing what I’m passionate about. It’s wasted time. Or maybe a stalling technique?

The past few months I have been focusing once again on my own style, my own passions, and you know what? I’m having so much more fun with my writing. My contemporary/urban fantasy novel rewrite is coming together better than I had hoped, and all I needed to do was to write to my passions. (And to learn to let go which is a whole different conversation for a different time.)

I know what I love. I love ghosts, monsters, demons, and angels. I love humor and drama wrapped up together. I know old cities and country, myth and history, folklore and urban legends.

I know I want to tell stories of people searching for who they are, who love each other, whether they are lovers or family or friends.

It comes back to that old adage: Don’t write what you know. Write what you LOVE.

I Write Romance

I write romance.

No, I’m not just talking about romance in the traditional genre sense of the word, though my current story seems to be straddling the line between urban fantasy and paranormal romance. I mean romance defined as:

(A) a prose narrative treating imaginary characters involved in events remote in time or place and usually heroic, adventurous, or mysterious (Merrian-Webster).

But I can narrow it down more precisely than that. I write stories about love.

This romance can be between two people who have fallen in love. It might be the love between a mother and her child, a father and his children, siblings, between a mentor and his/her apprentice, between friends, between strangers who have created a bond that transcends their differences, between a person and their god, or people learning to love themselves.

Every story I write is a story about love.

I write romance.

And I love it.

What stories about love do you write?