Readers ask why…
Why do I write? It’s a fair question with a couple of answers, depending on the layers peeled back. Maybe first is the escape factor. When I’m working, I literally leave the everyday world, with its frustrations, toxic people, errands, and distractions, and travel to Christmas Valley, the idyllic hamlet of romance in my stories.
And, it is tremendously liberating and therapeutic, at least for me, slipping out of reality to interact with, and better know my characters. As I help each explore their strengths, weaknesses, triumphs and disappointments, they come alive. After a while, they feel like friends, even family—people with foibles and shortcomings and quirky personalities that endear them to me…and in a perfect world, to you too, my readers.
On another level, writing this series is hugely empowering. I’ve created a world, populated it and get to tell everyone what to say and do. Does it get any better than that? Yes, I love it!
I am sometimes asked if I use any “special tools” to write and/or edit a book and I never quite know how to answer. It seems that writing is a very individual process, unique and different for each author. Some are wonderfully disciplined, (I wish I were) and others, like me, work feverishly when inspiration rains from the heavens. I seldom outline or plan much in advance, but instead, close my eyes, and envision the people and places and bones of the story, and then describe it to my audience.
My first romance, “Where Love Grows Wild,” was probably the most difficult because everything and everyone was new, characters, locations and plot, all written and created for the first time. Uncharted territory, so to speak. But once the setting and people were sketched out, the book took on a life of its own. Now well into the next tale of passion in the series, the story is unfolding beautifully. So I guess if there is a “special tool,” it is the one we all share, reader and writer alike—imagination gone wild.
Oh, and I like cowboys too. I like ‘em a lot.
Quotes from a favorite author.
Natalie Goldberg Quotes – BrainyQuote
