Imagine packing up your own children and sending them off to a stranger who will then manage their lives from then on (i.e. edit your book and do things to it to make it even more marketable) – and knowing once you send your children away, they will never be returned to you. That’s kind of how it feels to work on a big novel and then send off the finished product.
Writing a story doesn’t involve just sitting down to the computer and putting an idea into words. That idea might have been brewing for months or even years, the characters living in your heart and mind all that time. Jake Harkner from my Outlaw series has lived in my heart and mind since about 1991, when I wrote down the idea for his story on the back of a check book with an eyebrow pencil because it suddenly came to me and I didn’t have a pen handy. That first book was published in 1993 and it took me 20 years to convince a publisher to let me write a sequel, which of course turned into four books and now I want to write a fifth. Part of the reason I want to write that fifth book is because I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE THESE CHARACTERS! I want to keep them alive for me and for my readers.
And now I know why it has taken me so long to even begin writing the contemporary Native American romance I talked about on Facebook a few days ago. The characters have been inside my heart and head for about 20 years now – maybe longer – and I know that if I write this book and actually sell it, I will have to “let go” of these characters. They won’t be just mine any more. Sounds strange, I’m sure, to non-writers, but I suppose as a reader who might love my characters as much as I do, they get the same feelings when the finish reading a book for which they have waited months to be able to read, especially books that are part of a series. They get done and they wish there was more because they don’t want to leave those characters.
Back to my comment about writing not being about just sitting down and getting it into a computer. Any well-written book takes weeks or months (sometimes years) of research before you even write it. So you go through all of that, and then you write the story – which normally takes 3-5 months for me. Sometimes, though, as with DO NOT FORSAKE ME and with my recent new book LOGAN’S LADY, the story is so real and already written in my head that it just pours out of me. I’ll sit for hours and days and weeks on-end doing almost nothing else but write – in which case I can turn out a 400-500 page book in about 6 weeks.
Either way, that first draft is not the finished product. I print it out – read and edit – go back to the computer and enter the edits – print it out again – read it again to check those edits, in which case I find even more things that need to be “fixed” – go back to the computer and enter all the new edits – read it again for even more edits – go back to the computer and enter those edits – then print it out once more and read the whole thing before I send it in to the publisher. So overall, you are with the characters night and day for weeks or months.
Then you send in the book. It’s like popping a balloon. Your elation at finishing a big book lasts only a day or so and then it’s – “Now what?” I want to go with my characters to the publisher and “protect and defend” them. “Don’t mess with my babies,” I want to say. The publisher has ripped them out of my arms. Plus, I feel like someone just took away my job and now I have to find a new one. “What do I work on now?”
My husband says I deserve a break, and I suppose I do, but I begin to panic. What if this book bombs? What if I never sell another book? I need to start another story and work on more ideas and make sure my publisher will take more – or make sure I have new stories ready to publish on Amazon so that my readers always have yet another book to look forward to.
If I had my way, I would continue my series books on and on into the children and grandchildren. I would stay with those families or couples I created for as long as possible. And if it was physically possible, I would publish a new story every month to keep my readers happy. Alas, there is only one of me and this old body can only sit for so long without aches and pains. Still, I try to ignore them because I want nothing more than to keep writing and keep turning out new stories.
Yet through all the 67 books I’ve now had published, so many of my characters will live with me forever and ever – most notably Zeke and Abbie Monroe from SAVAGE DESTINY – Caleb and Sarah Sax (from my BLUE HAWK trilogy) –Maggie Tucker and Sage Lightfoot from PARADISE VALLEY, Sunny Landers and Colt Travis from THUNDER ON THE PLAINS, Gabe Beaumont and Faith Kelley from TAME THE WILD WIND, Addy and Parker Cole from UNTIL TOMORROW, Lettie McBride and Luke Fontaine from WILDEST DREAMS, Two Wolves and Claire from CAPTURE MY HEART and A WARRIOR’S PROMISE, and of course Jake and Randy Harkner from my OUTLAW books. There are so many more! If you go to Amazon.com and type in my name, you will find pages and pages of my titles.
Sometimes I scan all my books and I wonder what will happen to all those characters after I am gone. Who will love and cherish them as I do? I’m so glad to realize that my readers will. And if they keep recommending those books to their family and friends, most of my books will continue to sell for a long time after I'm no longer in this world, which means my characters will live on for a long time to come. As far as I am concerned, they did live once for real and they told their stories to me from the past. I guess that’s why most of my books came out of me so easily. Those characters just visited me for a while and whispered their stories to me. I simply wrote down what they told me happened and how they felt about it. And yes, I’m just crazy enough to think that I just might meet some of my characters in another world, another life.
Can you tell I’m feeling sentimental? I hope Sourcebooks takes good care of my new “baby.” They are already working on a cover!
