Firsts

I was asked by a friend on my blog to tell the story of how I got my start in writing, which was going to be the topic of my post today. Unfortunately, I realized that story--going from start all the way to publication--would be quite lengthy unless I skipped all the good parts. So instead of trying to put it all in one space, I decided I'd start with how I came about writing that very first attempt.

I was 42. My husband had just quit his day job to start up a part-time business, my son was 7 and becoming independent, I'd settled into my career in Finance, finally finished furnishing and decorating our dream home, and for the first time in years, I actually had some time on my hands. So I started reading again, something I had only done sporadically over the last decade. I got into murder mysteries, which led into romantic suspense. My first ever romance novel was NAKED IN DEATH, by J. D. Robb, and I quickly found myself more interested in Eve and Roarke than Who Done It. After reading the bulk of that series, I started searching for other authors, and picked up works by Nora Roberts and Lori Foster. It was somewhere in there that I started wondering if I could write a romance novel.

I'd had some prior publishing experience. When my son was younger, I'd tried getting some short humor articles on parenting published in magazines like Family Circle and Parents. I think I still have the poorly photocopied grainy form rejection letter by Family Circle, sent to me in my own SASE. So when the idea of a novel came to mind, I was familiar with the process and knew what kind of odds I'd be facing.

I was holding Lori Foster's anthology, FALLEN ANGELS, in my hands and noticed on the back cover, "Visit us at http://www.eharlequin.com/." I thought, this was a company that published short stories, and while the idea of writing a whole book was so far from my stream of consciousness, I did think that maybe I could produce something short that might end up in an anthology. So I got on my computer and brought up eHarlequin in search of the writer's guidelines I'd learned about in my magazine article travails.

I was looking for a single web page that might have an address and brief instructions on where to submit a query. I had NOT expected to find pages and pages of guidelines, one tailored to each of the gazillion lines Harlequin published. (I should note here that other than their ST imprints, Mira and HQN, I'd never read a Harlequin novel, and honestly didn't even really know there was such a thing as "category" romance, or that it was any different than any other romance novel out there.)

I also hadn't expected an entire on-line community devoted to people like me who were interested in writing romance, where editors held Q&As and actual authors really talked to people and answered questions. I literally spent the next few weeks just pouring over it all, reading pages and pages of threads, all the backlisted workshops and contests--they held contests! Through that, I stumbled on RWA and found they also held contests!

My new dream was born. You see, after I'd so thoroughly crashed and burned trying to sell seriously funny one-page articles to magazines, my hopes of getting anything actually published were somewhere between pond scum and bat guano. But a contest--now, that was a whole different ball game! I felt it was entirely within my reach to enter a writing contest and win something totally cool like a certificate, a pin or maybe even a plaque. (I did. They are still framed and displayed on my wall.) So I sat down and wrote two opening chapters of my very first romance novel.

I don't remember the title, nor do I fully remember the plot. What I do remember is that the entire first chapter took place with my heroine sitting in the waiting room of a realtor's office. She was going to buy her first house, and she was waiting for her appointment with the realtor. The hero would be the realtor. (I know what you're thinking--wow, this is such a fascinating premise, why don't I pick it up and finish it now?)

There was absolutely no action in this first chapter at all. Just the heroine sitting there waiting. And while she waited, she pondered her life and everything that brought her to this point--exciting things like where she went to school, where she lived now, how pretty the grape vines in Sonoma County are in the fall when they turn orange. It was colossal backstory dump all told through introspection. There wasn't a solitary line of dialogue and no movement. Pretty much everything a writer is NOT supposed to do, I managed to cover in that first chapter. In fact, it's quite amazing, the thoroughness with which I managed to cover so much wrongness.

I think the chapter ended with the receptionist saying something like Mr. So-And-So will see you now. Note, that there was nothing on the prior pages to build up tension for that cliff-hanging moment. In fact, that announcement only relieved the reader with the fact that this monotonous introspection would finally come to an end, and that maybe, if they turned the page, something might actually happen.

Still, I was bliss in my ignorance. Thrilled, would be a better word for it. And that Monday, I brought the chapters into the office and announced to my friends that I was going to write a romance novel. I shoved the pages in their hands and asked, "What do you think?!"

Now, here's the good part about showing your first attempts to friends and relatives--ideally friends and relatives like mine who don't actually read much of anything and for sure know nothing about writing. They all told me it was great!! They loved it, thought I had real talent for describing how pretty the grape vines are in October when they turn orange. They thought I should keep up with it! Squeee!

What ever happened to that particular story? Well, I never entered it in anything and never wrote any more than those first two chapters. I think somewhere on eHarlequin, I ended up running across some writing advice about not dumping backstory in the first chapter, and I realized I had it all wrong. But I wasn't discouraged, because though I discovered this first attempt was totally flawed, my friends thought it was great, and gave me the encouragement I needed to try it again, this time knowing a little more than I did first time around.

So that's it. That's the beginning of the beginning in my quest to write a romance novel. It would be two years, lots of chapters, contests, new friends who DO read and write, rejections and writing classes before I finally got that amazing call from Kathryn Lye telling me she wanted to buy PRIVATE CONFESSIONS. But that was the seed that sprouted the whole process.

Next time I blog here, I'll continue my story. But for now, I'm curious to hear yours. If you're a writer, what was the very first romance novel you ever attempted to write? And if you're a reader, have you ever thought about writing? Do you remember the first romance novel you ever read? If so, what was it?