I made a special trip to visit my writer-friends in Central Oregon over the weekend. Aside from the total confusion whenever I drive there — I swear, even a navigation system doesn’t help! — I always have a great time with my fellow chapter mates (RWA’s Rose City Romance Writers).
Sure, the drinks flowed. Sure, there were a ton of laughs. And, yeah, there was some conversation about the, umm. . . attributes of the perfect, mouth-watering hero. (Well, duh. We are romance writers, after all!) But through the three or so hours we were together, our conversation was dotted with serious discussions about the business end of writing. Taxes, anyone? To incorporate or not? And what about marketing for authors who write in multiple subgenres? Is this any more of a challenge? (Think Paty Jager who writes Western historical, Western contemporary, and Native American romance.)
One of the last questions we tossed around: When we hit the bestseller lists 🙂 what advice would we offer fellow writers?
Ella Zane: You’re writing to entertain. Go ahead and be excited about your character, but know your plot!
Paty Jager: Learn craft, and read the genre that you write.
Karen Duvall: Always ask “why” as you’re writing. Why is the character doing this? Why are they saying that? Why do they want this? Everything a character does has to be motivated, tied together, and the reader has to be clued in.
Marie Harte: Entertain yourself, and you’ll entertain your readers.
Diana McCollum: One word – perseverance.
Melia Alexander: Write with passion. Live your characters as you write their stories. Allow them to shine through the words you put on the page so that they invoke emotion in the reader and she lives the story, too.
All in all, re-connecting with my Central Oregon Roses was a fabulously, fantastical, stupendously awesome evening! (Beat that Marie Harte! 🙂 )
And it turns out even sassy, sexy, fun writers can be serious, too.
Sometimes.
But not too often — heaven knows life’s too short to be taken seriously most of the time. . ..
-Melia
