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"Be True to Your Writing Heart"
by Jennifer Thor

As a young girl I used to write stories by the dozens. There were stories about flying horses and magical worlds. Every story starred my best friends and me as the heroes, that one girl who I could never befriend as the villain and of course the one really cute boy as prince charming. The stories were rarely more than three or four pages long, but they came with illustrations. They were my pride and joy. They were never work, never required sweat or tears.

As I grew older the stories changed to poems filled with teen angst and love unrequited. Then again the poems changed back to stories. One I just found again involved a babysitter being terrorized by an unknown caller. Shortly after for a reason I don't remember, I stopped writing.

I didn't pick up a pen again until six years ago when my youngest was a toddler watching preschool television. My husband came home to catch me singing the theme song to one of those shows. He begged me to rediscover my happy place.

I did. I haven't stopped. I love to write, it's my way to relax after a long day filled with children, work and home. It's my dream, like most writers, to one day, preferably soon, be published.

Over the past years I have learned more about my writing, not only in the technical sense, but in the heart sense as well. I honestly believe the most important factor necessary to writing the great romance novel, or any novel is the writer themselves. Learn who you are, discover what you love and enjoy. All the research in the world is not going make up for your personal love of a good story. I spent five years writing the historical romance. I kept pushing aside that story that kept begging to be told because I was a historical writer.

Write what you love, write the story of your heart, be true to that vision. Your characters and your readers will thank you for it.

"The Melding of the Mundane"

by Sally J. Walker

(From A WRITER'S YEAR; Daily Thought-provoking Essays for Any Writer)

Long ago I noted that storytelling as a whole (no matter the media) swept right over the mundane and "earthier" moments of daily life. More recently I have found the subjective, detailed writers among us slipping in such detail as casual notes. In my opinion, those stories have a level of credibility rather than embarrassing or distasteful quality. The concept works if it is not belabored but merely mentioned in passing.

This begs the question of how much detail is too much. At what point is a piece of fiction more like an academic enumeration or explanation? The objective or journalistic writer tends to provide the surface facts a reader needs to understand the story and character, whereas the subjective writer delves into the miniscule details. Both styles have problems of extremes. Objective skimming can be too sparse and miss connecting with the reader's sensation memories. The lush, dense detailing of the subjective style can inundate the reader and diminish the overall experience of the character's life by providing information the CHARACTER takes for granted and doesn't even notice. In that case, the writer is INSTRUCTING the reader's thoughts, not tantalizing the imagination to vicariously live with the characters.

Then there is the question of "dramatic vs. drudgery." Exactly how much detail is needed to move from the mundane to focus on dramatic influences on a character's life experience? Again, I preach, "Use ONLY what is significant to your character's awareness at that moment." Don't give just the drama, but neither should you ignore the drudgery of reality. And there is always the technique of summary's narration to lump the insignificant into a "logically noted then relatively insignificant" category in the story. Achieve a balance in your style to satisfy the reader and keep that person coming back to read more.