romance novel

by Kimberly A. Cook           (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Seems I’ve been overdosing on Hallmark Channel movies lately. Saturday’s preview “Stranded in Paradise” was pretty fun. The usual fired from job, what makes you happy dilemma. Since this last year has been all about what the heck do I really want to write, the “what writing makes you happy?” popped in my brain from the movie.

Fiction is and always will be my first love. Yes, I’m a control freak. Able to orchestrate all my characters and events, I get to make happy endings happen. New acronym! HEH! That doesn’t always happen in life and the news.

Then I read author Bob Mayer’s latest blog post about what 10 things he was grateful for as a writer. That hit home too. One big one for me is all we need is our imagination and pen, pencil or crayon and paper or keyboard to write down our dreams/stories.

Widget manufacturers do not have this luxury. They have to do business plans, get loans, build factories, hire people, get widget making products, make the widgets, package the widgets, ship the widgets, on and on. While writers do those things when we indie publish on a different scale, it’s all very craftsman type of work, boutique manufacturing if you will.

So while we physically have to create our books/widgets, we can get started with very little equipment. Plus if you dive in the recycle bins you can find used paper and if you visit places with free pens you are set with minimal start-up costs. Not a lot of capital outlay.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle is figuring out what you want to write. Spoiler alert; it will change as you gather experience in life. That’s okay. VHS tapes are gone too, so some things last a certain time and then morph into something else. Same with what we choose to write.

So is there one certain part of writing fiction that makes me happy? Yes, it’s the “I’ve got a secret” part. I know what’s going to happen next in the story. Most of the time. Tried a new creative writing exercise last week. Getting back into my fiction book has been a challenge so I reviewed the last couple chapters.

For several months my characters have been in an airplane ready to land, but I’ve just left them up there. Quite the feat if you think about the fuel supply issues. Well, last week I told myself, “I’ve got to go home and land a plane in Afghanistan.” On Sunday that’s what I did. Gave my brain a task and it worked on it while I was doing the whole daily life thing.

Thinking about my writing “to do assignment” in such a personal way made me quite accountable too. I had characters almost Lost In Space for heaven’s sake!

One of the fun clandestine things about being a writer is we get to live the adventures we create. We write from the security and comfort of our writing hidey hole and explore the universe. We get to do research too, which is a blast. And make Happy Endings Happen in my case. How cool is that?

Have you left your fiction characters up in the air? Writers, rescue your characters!

Bob Mayer’s Blog Post: http://writeitforward.wordpress.com/2014/08/05/an-authors-attitude-of-10-gratitudes/