An employer asked my husband to move to Colorado Springs, but within six months my husband had changed to a job in St. Louis. Our children were in the middle of a school year, and we had a rental agreement in place, so the kids and I stayed in Colorado for six months.
I spent many days alone while the children were at school and evenings while they were doing homework, or watching TV, or getting ready for bed, and I found the millionaires (now billionaires) falling in love stories I bought bored me. They all seemed to have the same plot and characters with different names.
So I began thinking about what could be different and what might interest me, and since we had one of the early Trash 80 computers, I began writing to entertain myself. It was about two teenagers, Gina and Wade, who for some reason I can't remember drove to Las Vegas after their prom, which wasn't too far away. They woke up hungover and returned home and split up only to meet again several years later to discover they were married. I know: another father didn't know about his childhood story. They were not so common then. Whatever I wrote was lost with time, but with a new and better computer, I started writing again when we moved to Missouri. It was then I discovered I wasn't interested in contemporary romance but in fantasy. Before that story was finished, I started a science fiction novel.
These remained only on my computer. I did send one out but got a rejection. After going back and reading what I sent in, I found that was only a just judgment as the manuscript was full of mechanical mistakes and plot errors. I rewrote it several more times before sending it out again. Wings e-Press accepted it.
I have discovered I write for the pleasure of writing, of creating an alternate world, and I'm not concerned about mega-sales, just ones that please those who read them.
Please visit the following authors for their comments on how they began writing:
Connie Vines
Victoria Chatham
Skye Taylor
Judith Copek
Dr. Bob Rich
Beverley Bateman
A.J. Maguire
Fiona McGier
Margaret Fieland
I, too, have those early MSS on file, in drawers, under the bed...
ReplyDeleteEditing is KING!
It's interesting our first attempts at a novel came under similar circumstances. My husband had decided married life was not for him and I had 3 small children so my evenings were long and lonely and suddenly writing a novel seemed like a great way to fill that hole in my life.
ReplyDeleteThis was a great topic, Rhobin, and I've enjoyed everyone's responses. Looks like we all have that first MSS that marked our starts.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't writing to fill time. I was writing to find happy endings after my dad passed on, and Mom was struggling with dementia. I really needed to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Before that, the stories were always in my head and dreams, but I figured that's where they'd stay.
ReplyDeleteWings gave me my start also, for which I will forever be grateful.
I can't tell you how many times I've tried writing a romance just to find out it bores me. I love reading them, but I can't spend the days upon days it takes to write them without throwing fantastical elements into the mix. It's like my brain shorts out and yanks me down a different path, leaving that sweet romance I meant to write floundering in the dust.
ReplyDeleteAnd I LOVE to read sci-fi, but whenever I've tried to write sci-fi, my brain sends me along the path to the romances of the people involved...even with aliens! I guess we have to take what our muses give us! In a way, I'm glad, because no one can ever accuse me of copying their plot/story, when I can't write what I enjoy reading.
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