As writers, we
sometimes feel very possessive of our characters. Deep down inside, I don’t
always want to share my favorite story and its characters with my readers.
Sounds crazy, I know, but then I haven’t been totally sane since I started
writing. I often feel a little jealous that my readers get to walk into my personal
and private world, my thoughts and loves, my personal story ideas that belong
only to me. As a writer, I am forced to give these things away once I finish a
story. If I want to make a living at this, I have no choice. And yet for me,
it’s never been about money. It’s always been about the stories, and my desire
to tell them and to share them. Yet when I do, I feel as though I’ve lost a
part of myself to the whole world and to a host of strangers who are reading
about my very personal thoughts and dreams.
Don’t get me
wrong. I absolutely love and appreciate anyone who buys my books and loves them
and tells others about them. But at the same time, once one of my books is
published, I am allowing readers to walk into my characters’ lives and see into
their private world. Those characters are no longer just mine. It’s kind of
like giving away my own children or sharing my husband with other women!!
I hope all of you
are laughing by now, and probably shaking your heads. Why on earth would I NOT
want to share my characters with others? That’s what this business is all about.
And maybe readers will never understand this, but I’ll bet a lot of WRITERS understand.
Until my book is published, my characters are just mine. No one else can have
them. This is the reason some writers, including me, have trouble starting a
book that is extra special, especially a story that has been in our minds and
hearts for many years. In those cases, once we actually do write the story,
it’s difficult to make others see it the way WE see it. We take it for granted
they will understand our story and love it the way we do, but if we don’t do a
good enough job getting all that passion and the inner struggles and psychological
idiosyncrasies of our characters across to our readers, we will ruin that story
that means so much to us.
When I start that
truly special story, I’m thinking, “OK, here goes. God, please let me do this
right, because this story and its characters mean so much to me.” Not all of
our stories come across as exciting or as beautiful or as moving as we see them
when we write them. Sometimes I ask myself if I am going too far in making my
hero and heroine as wonderful as I see them both. That’s part of the reason
there are certain stories I’ve never written. I fear the readers will never
understand my characters’ deepest feelings, the reasons they do what they do. They
will never understand the passion I feel for the story. And once I let go of
the story and give it over to others, I am, in a sense, finally letting go of
characters who have lived with me for years and I am leaving them exposed to
the whole world. They are no longer just mine. Also,once published, I can never
go back and change anything. All the “what if’s” and all the events and other
characters I might think of later, who should have been in the story, have no
chance of ever coming to fruition.
I have never
finished a book that doesn’t haunt me later as far as still questioning whether
I did a good job, or whether this or that character should have done or said
something differently, or if I should have used a secondary character in a plot
twist I ended up not using. Sometimes it’s weeks or months or even years later
that I fret over these things. So, as long as I don’t publish the book, I can
still “play” with it. I can still change a character or slightly change the
plot. I can live with the characters, keep changing some of their dialogue,
think about other characters, changes to the plot and story events, the goals
and motivations of the characters.I truly don’t want to let go of my story, and
sometimes that keeps me from writing that special book in the first place.
This realization hit
me over the last couple of days, as I finally decided to write my first
full-length contemporary story. I’m not giving away the title of the book
because I think it’s different and special. I have lived with this story and
its characters since the 80’s, believe it or not. I never wrote it because I
didn’t think anyone would want a contemporary story from me. However, it will
be pure Bittner style, and I really think my readers will love it because of
that. Also, it’s a classic “Indian romance,” similar to my historical Native
American romances. The only difference is that it takes place in today’s time.
Still, Native American romance is not high on the list of genre priorities –
i.e. – most publishers will think it won’t sell all that well and won’t take
the book. So be it. If I can’t sell it, I will publish it myself on Amazon.
There is yet another
reason I have hesitated to write this book. Publishers will not know how to
market it. It’s inspirational, culture clash (modern white vs. Native American
culture), suspense, murder mystery, hot sex - in spite of religious facets -a
hero and heroine who both come with a lot of “baggage” that could get in the
way of their love for each other – a love neither of them wants but feelings
they can’t fight. It even involves an opioid addiction, an abusive ex-husband,
a dead ex-wife, the American Indian Movement, and embezzlement. Then there is
an Ecumenical preacher involved, the D.A.R, and problems on the Pine Ridge
Indian Reservation, a heroine afraid to love again, and a hero who can’t let go
of his dead wife – the way she died and why she died. And throughout the story,
although it’s contemporary, Native American mysticism and ancient culture give
the story the feel of a story taking place in the 1800’s.
Is that enough to
confuse you? Is it inspirational? Indian/white romance? Suspense? Big women’s
fiction? Just plain contemporary romance? I don’t know. Neither will a
publisher or marketer. Deeply religious people will enjoy the deep faith
involved throughout – but they might be offended by some of the language,
crime, and explicit sex involved. Those who love hot sex in their books but
aren’t all that religious might not like the religious part of it. However, I
can’t worry about those things. I know in my heart that I can mix all these
things into a wonderful story. I am tired of trying to decide. I only know the story keeps kicking me in the
rear-end, begging to be written. Yet I know that once I do write it and reach
“the end,” it will no longer be just mine, especially once it’s published. It
will be available to all my wonderful readers, and it will never again be just
mine. That makes me a little jealous of all my readers, who get to move in on
my characters and their story, and keep a little of it for themselves. Part of
me wants to say, “Give it back! It’s mine! You can’t have this story or my
characters. They belong to me.”
But then when the
great reader comments start coming in, which I hope will happen, I’ll feel a
little better about all of it. After all, I wrote the book, I made the
characters come alive and I carried them close to my heart for 30 years. So, in
a way the story can never belong to anyone else. 30 years is a long time to
hold a story inside your head and your heart. I’ve gone through several
scenarios over all these years. I even moved the location of the story. In the
beginning it was supposed to take place in Arizona and involve an Apache or a
Comanche Indian. I even WROTE THE BOOK under a different title about 25 years
ago! But for reasons I won’t go into, that ended up not working. So, I returned
to what I know best, the Lakota Sioux … and a woman from New England – two
people as far removed from each other in surroundings and up-bringing and culture
and life situations as day and night. That’s what I most love writing … nearly
impossible situations. How do the hero and heroine manage to come together –
and stay together – through turmoil and heartache and pasts that try very hard
to keep them apart?
One thing that never,
ever changed in these thirty years were the hero and heroine – their names and
the basic plot. Never once did I see them in any other way than I did from the
very beginning. The only things that changed were some of the story events, the
“villain” (so to speak) and the locations involved. I figured I just couldn’t
live any longer without sharing these characters and their story. That original
book I wrote has disappeared forever. I wrote it before computers and I no
longer know what happened to that typed manuscript. That’s probably a good
thing. God wanted me to wait until I was a better writer, and He didn’t want me
to go back to that first version because it wasn’t quite right.
So, I’m starting
over, and once the story is finally “out there” for the world to see, I’ll try
not to be jealous of my readers being able to walk into the characters’ lives.
I think God means for writers to share their stories. Why else would He plant
these ideas in our heads? So, I will write this book, and I will leave it up to
God what happens to it. He is telling me to share this story because the very
basic plot is beautiful and, I truly believe, it will have a big affect on my
readers’ personal faith without being in any way “preachy.” I absolutely love
the idea of mixing religious undertones with crime and sex and a faithful
person’s inner struggles with their faith. All the things that happen to us in real
life that try to destroy that faith are portrayed in this story.
So, “Okay, here
goes. God, please let me do this right, because this story and its characters
mean so much to me.”
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