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Yes! I got to travel! Here I am at Cheverny on the Loire Valley, France. |
I have been writing for more than 40 years. Beginning during the 80s, I practiced writing for newspapers (a financial column!), magazines (Maryland history!) and the occasional interview of a Washingtonian in the news.
Why? In those days, to impress the trad publishers in New York or London with your proposal for fiction, one needed a resume. I got one.
Along the way, I also got a corporate job and wrote for the CEOs and for their testimonies before Congress and Senate.
But on the Metro in the mornings, I wrote long hand (no laptops then!), on yellow pads. On Saturday mornings, I transferred it all to my first computer. That was a giant thing as wide as your current flat screen tv and 10 times as deep. The printer was a thing called dot matrix. Letters of the alphabet formed by dots. Fun.
I joined Washington Romance Writers as one of the original founders. There, we taught ourselves to write fiction. Plotting, characterization and motivation were actual classes or meeting topics.
We worked hard. I also joined a small group of would-be authors. We were 8, all unpublished when we started. Eight years later when we began to disperse, move away, etc., all but one of us was unpublished.
What we learned together was that writing was a joy, a release, a process...and a job. Because once you had a contract, you most likely wanted more. And so did your publisher.
We wrote romance because, female all of us, we understood that emotion and attachment very well. If a few of us also wrote mysteries or murders, we did it because we also understand that often people let you down, betray you and leave.
But love of romance stayed. That was because we saw change in our sisters out there in the world. They had college degrees and were paid less than the men with equal position. (I raise my hand on that one...until I told my corporation I had to be paid equal to a man or I was not interested in their promotion of more work but less pay.) We saw that women needed to stand up and stay up. We saw they needed role models and not just Gloria Steinem or Dolly Parton or a new Congresswoman from San Francisco named Pelosi.
We understood that romance was the starry beginning of a relationship but that without talking, that little thing called loved died. If you don't share your experience, strength and hope, you cannot find your similarities or your divisions.
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| Our daughter's anniversary gift! |
Winston Churchill once said that the benefit he received from joining his mother for tea each afternoon was that he learned the 'Fine Art of Communication'. Those afternoons taught him invaluable lessons he used with world leaders.
Reading a romance allows the reader to experience that art. It shows the way.
Writing it also helped me in my marriage. Now almost 57 years of it, we still have our moments when we must re-learn each other's experience, strength and hope.
Romances still feature conflicts that are real and terrible if unresolved.
Read one. Two. More. If you have a problem in your relationships, you will find the one that fits your situation. And it will give you a shot of confidence that it can be solved.
Nibble of my first cherry in this series? YES!
