As I mentioned at the beginning of this series, one of the comments I hear most often when people find out I’m a published author is: “Oh, I’ve always wanted to write.” Or something similar: “I have a story I’ve been thinking about writing for a long time. How do I get started?”

Put Words on Paper

In my mind, what separates true “writers” from those who “want to write” is the compulsion to actually put words on the page. This goes for every type of writing there is: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, essay, memoir, etc. If you truly are going to be a writer, there must be somewhere within you the drive, the desire, to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, and actually write. The need to share whatever story, information, image, or experience that’s burning a hole in the pocket of your mind must be so consuming that you can’t help but write about it, whether it’s blogging about it, writing about it in a journal, writing snippets of scenes/dialogue on fast-food napkins, or stealing moments during a meeting to jot down a story idea. Because if you don’t have that burning desire to see your ideas put into black-and-white, hard-edged text, you’ll never succeed as a writer.

Live Life to the Fullest

Second, but of almost equal importance to the compulsion to put words on paper, is your ability to live life to its fullest, to seek out “new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before.” No, this doesn’t mean you have to be a thrill-seeker, nor a world traveler, nor even someone who is outgoing and adventurous. What it means is that you have to be an observer. You have to immerse yourself in life, to catalog your experiences and those you observe in people around you. In a 1962 article for The Writer (reprinted in the May 2008 edition), best-selling author Sloan Wilson (The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit) put it this way:

The important thing of course is to learn to live fully, to love with kindness as well as passion, to hate the right things and even the right people effectively rather than self-destructively, to worship well. . . . Writing is, in general, no better than…other kinds of activity; it is only better for certain people, those whose emotions and ideas take the form of words more easily than patterns of color, sound or other methods of expression. For those, the typewriter is a blessing. But it can be used well only if one is constantly aware that it is only a tool for the expression of life or the reporting of life—by itself, the typewriter has nothing to offer but an annoying metallic clatter.

Obedience

One of my favorite books to pull out and read segments from whenever I’m doubting my calling to write, or am just exhausted by the process, is Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water: “If the work comes to the artist and says, ‘Here I am, serve me,’ then the job of the artist, great or small is to serve. The amount of the artist’s talent is not what it is about.” So the third part of being a writer is not talent but obedience.

Eh? What’s that you say? OBEDIENCE??? Yes, obedience. Obedience to the calling of the story inside you longing to be written. Obedience to yourself when you set a writing schedule. Obedience to pick up a pencil and scrap of paper to write down the scene, line, or idea that pops into your mind at the least opportune moment. Obedience to make time to write a priority in your life. Obedience to learning the craft of writing. And obedience to stop if it becomes apparent writing is not the path you are supposed to be following right now.

Let Go

Something that is of vital importance to both the dabbler and the writer seeking publication is the fourth guidepost on this journey: the ability to let go. This is a two-fold step. The first half, as Obi Wan Kenobi put it in Star Wars, is to “let go of your conscious self and act on instinct.” As you are creating, in the composing process, there can be nothing self-conscious about the act of writing. There can be no fear of embarrassment, no worry of what others will think of it. Stephen King puts it this way in On Writing: “write with the door closed . . . Your stuff starts out being just for you.”

Even if you are intent on the pursuit of publication, you cannot be thinking about that when you’re in the creative process. You have to let go of every outside influence but the story. You have to let yourself go and allow yourself to become immersed in your characters, in your setting, in your plot. You have to let go of everything your left-brain is trying to trip you up with (You can’t use passive voice!; Are my critique partners going to ding me on this?; Does this fit with so-and-so house’s guidelines?), and, as already mentioned, be obedient to the story wanting to be told. Let go of the voices (internal or external) telling you that what you write will never be good enough. Let go (and banish forever) the thought that if people knew what you were doing, they’d laugh at you (again, just think about those hoards of people out there who “want to write”). Let go of the notion that you have to write within certain genre guidelines or in the certain manner of a highly touted author or a particular publisher’s expectations. Let go of anything that limits you.

The second half of this comes after you’ve completed the composition process. Let go of the idea that your “baby” is perfect just as it is. Let go of the idea that it’s the most wonderful thing ever written and publishers will be fighting to get their hands on it. Let go of the dream of a smooth, easy road to publication. Let go of your favorite scenes, your favorite pieces of dialogue, your favorite characters. Let go of the belief that everyone who reads it will love it. Again, returning to Stephen King: “rewrite with the door open. . . . Once you know what the story is and get it right—as right as you can, anyway—it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.” Let go and take criticism—from contest judges, from critique partners, from mentors, from editors. Let go and be willing to change—be willing to learn, be willing to edit, be willing to grow, as a person and as a writer.

If you can do all of this, then you might be ready to be a writer.

When I left off the story yesterday, I’d gone back to school to pursue my passion for writing. But even still, in 1999, I wasn’t exactly sure where that journey would take me.

Then, in January 2001, I “mysteriously” received a brochure in the mail advertising the Blue Ridge Mountain Writers’ Conference to be held for a week in April of that year at Ridgecrest, North Carolina. A writers’ conference? I’d never heard of such a creature! As I read through the titles and descriptions of the workshops, I got more and more excited about the idea of actually attending this conference.

After hearing about my excitement over the conference, my parents gave it to me as my birthday present that year. I couldn’t believe it … I was going to a writers’ conference! I counted down the weeks, days, hours, minutes until time to leave the first Sunday in April. An hour earlier than necessary, I was in the car headed toward Asheville, North Carolina. I didn’t even let the fact that I was coming down with a cold dampen my enthusiasm.

I arrived at three in the afternoon to a very quiet Ridgecrest campus, checked in, found my room, and unloaded the car. Then, in the quiet of my private room, doubts began to assail me. Why did I come here? I’m no writer—I’ve never even managed to finish anything. I only have one major manuscript I’ve ever worked on and it’s 200,000 words of bits and pieces.

When I overcame my innate shyness and sat at a table at dinner with several other people, I was relieved to find out that not only was I not the only unpublished writer in the room, I wasn’t the only one attending a writers’ conference for the first time. I was, however, floored and quite in awe when our conversation was interrupted by a man who came up to one of the ladies at the table to tell her that Hallmark Entertainment was interested in one of her novels for a movie of the week! (He was her agent, as it turned out—and now I wish I could remember just which author this was.)

Over the next several days, as I sat in the general assembly meetings and workshops, I heard people talking about their writing unashamedly—even signing up for times to meet with publishers, editors, and agents to pitch their work. These people talked in the same terminology I’d used for my writing my whole life—talking about characters as if they were real people, their novels as if they were their children, and writing as if it were a way of life instead of an obsession to hide.

One of the most eye-opening workshops at the conference was Yvonne Lehman’s Writing the Romance Novel. Yvonne talked about the growing market for sweet/inspirational romance stories and introduced the names of several publishers’ romance imprints as places that actually wanted manuscripts that didn’t include explicit sensuality… the kinds of stories I’d always written. Then, she brought out her storyboards. On two huge pieces of poster board, Yvonne had pictures from magazines of her hero and heroine, the heroine’s antebellum home, and other images that were important for her as she wrote that particular novel.

Light broke through the darkness of secrecy in my soul. I wasn’t the only weirdo in the world! Other people did this, too, and talked about it! Not only talked about it, but were also proud of what they were doing.

It was in this class that I met two people who, unbeknownst to them, would become part of the pantheon of people I highly regard: Patty Smith Hall and Rachel Hauck. They were also romance writers, and as we sat with several other people around the fire one evening sharing first chapters, they mentioned a writing group they were part of: American Christian Romance Writers. It was an e-mail loop, they explained, made up of about 100 people who write Christian Romance as well as a few people who write women’s fiction and other genres, as well.

Not wanting to lose what I’d found at the conference, I sent my application and membership fee in as soon as I got home. I became member #120 of ACRW in April 2001.

After I digested a lot of what I’d learned at the conference—the most important piece of which was “Above all else, FINISH YOUR FIRST DRAFT!”—I took a story I’d been toying with for a year or so, sat down with a new determination to do something bold: write with the ultimate goal in mind of getting published.

It took me nine months, but I eventually finished that manuscript. I finished the next one in only seven months. And my third, I wrote in four months—while taking nine undergraduate hours and working full-time.

In 2002, my first manuscript received an “honorable mention” in the first annual ACRW contest for unpublished writers. In 2003, the neither of the other two that I’d entered even came close to finaling. But even though many of the comments that came back seemed harsh on first blush, when I went back and read them many weeks later, something amazing happened. After the negative experiences I’d had the first time I was in college with my writing being denigrated, and selfishly keeping my stories to myself for years, I suddenly felt free. I felt like I’d been given permission to call myself a writer, to announce to the world that this was what I wanted to do with my life: write and teach Creative Writing.

By the time I got those score sheets back in 2003, I’d already started working on a story about a wedding planner falling in love while planning a wedding for someone from her past. I knew there was something special about it. It was going to be the one. So that’s the attitude I had when I submitted it for the 2004 ACFW Noble Theme contest. Imagine my surprise when it not only didn’t final, but came back with mediocre to low scores!

I went through several different story/character variations and rewrote the first ten chapters three times before submitting the idea as my potential thesis novel for graduate school in 2004. Once I was admitted and started the Master’s in Writing Popular Fiction program, I was forced to move beyond chapter ten, which is when I finally came up with the idea of what I call the “Shakespearean hidden-identity plot”; but rather than going back immediately and rewriting the first ten chapters a fourth time, I completed the manuscript—and then went back and rewrote the beginning, based on what I learned about the story/characters by actually writing it to its conclusion.

After finishing the first draft at the end of my first year of grad school, I spent the next six months revising (three full manuscript revisions) before it passed as my thesis. I entered the first twenty-five pages in the 2006 ACFW Genesis contest—and then when I had to choose a selection to read at my oral presentation before graduation, I realized the opening needed to be revised yet again. So what placed Second in the Genesis contest wasn’t even the final version of the opening! But because of the revisions I’d done and the feedback I’d gotten on the full manuscript from critique partners and my grad-school mentors, I knew I couldn’t procrastinate any longer. It was time to start submitting. So I did. To two agents. One rejected me, the other signed me as a client.

After signing with my agent, Chip MacGregor, in January 2007, I felt like I was well on my way to having a book contract within a few months. And then the rejections started rolling in. One after another of the publishing houses politely “declined” the opportunity to publish my book. I started getting anxious, feeling like I’d let him down and like nothing I wrote would ever be good enough to get published. There was a glimmer of hope in September 2007, when another story went to pub board at a publishing house, but was then rejected.

When the ACFW conference rolled around, neither Chip nor I could remember having received a response from Barbour on the proposal for Stand-In Groom. For some reason that fall, even though I was pretty sure everyone had already rejected it, I spent a lot of time making up a one-sheet for it. When I got to conference, I learned that the only editor appointment I’d gotten was with none other than Rebecca Germany of Barbour Publishing. I pitched another series to her (The Ransome Trilogy), which she passed on, which only took about five minutes of our fifteen minute time-slot. So I decided to ask her about Stand-In Groom. She thought she remembered seeing the proposal but asked us to resubmit, so as soon as conference was over, we sent it on to her.

For a couple of months . . . nothing.

Then, at one o’clock in the afternoon on December 6, 2007, I received a phone call from Chip that he’d heard from Rebecca that they were interested in acquiring the book. The next day, we had the contract!

Since then, I’ve signed two additional contracts with Barbour, for the rest of the Brides of Bonneterre series, as well as the contracts with Harvest House for The Ransome Trilogy.

When I first got “the call,” I was almost embarrassed to talk about how I managed to get an agent and a book contract on the very first thing I submitted. But then when I thought about how much work that manuscript represented, three years of my life—three years when I was working 40+ hours a week at the newspaper, 20–30 hours a week in my officer positions with ACFW, and attending undergraduate and graduate school part-time—I realized I didn’t have anything to be embarrassed about. Hard work and perseverance comes in many forms, whether it’s a pile of rejection letters or years of waiting and working.

Welcome to the first series of 2009! And if you’re visiting my site for the first time, I hope you’ll come back regularly. Be sure to check out the Writing Series Index.

How does someone “become” a writer? That’s a question I get a lot when people find out I’m published. I’ve heard of people who’ve sat down with the companion workbook of Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel, following all of the steps in it and “writing” a novel. Some have even gotten published that way.

I also know a lot of people who didn’t start writing until they were adults, and many of them have had great success as well.

But if you talk to these folks and really dig deep, you’re most likely going to find that two things are true: most of them were avid readers their whole lives and most of them have always had a very active imagination. They may have focused their creativity in other areas, like scrapbooking, sewing, painting, acting, but they’ve always been aware of that need to express themselves creatively.

So how did I become a writer?

When I was a child, I wasn’t a writer. I made up plenty of stories, but they were acted out with my Barbie dolls or in my imagination as I played outside—other people, other places, other times all came alive in my mind’s-eye and I didn’t mind playing by myself. In fact, I rather preferred it, because then I didn’t have to explain to anyone else what I was envisioning and try to get them to play along the way the story went in my head.

As an adolescent, I started to read voraciously. My fancy turned to romance novels and at the age of twelve, I ran across a series produced especially for pre-teens/young teenagers. Each had an setting that revolved around an important historical event or era – such as the Salem witch trials, the Battle of New Orleans in 1815, or the fall of the Alamo in 1836 to Santa Ana. These books grew in me not only a love for history, but a love for story telling because they inspired me to write. I wasn’t content with a kiss and a happily-ever-after ending. I wanted to know what happened the next day, the next year, the next decade. So the first writing I ever did was at twelve or thirteen years old when I started writing “sequels” to my favorite books. This, then, inspired me to start putting some of those stories that were always running through my head down on paper.

That experience—realizing I could put words down on paper and express the stories that I’d always had within me—opened a flood-gate; and for the last two decades, I’ve never stopped writing.

As I started to write, as is the case with most beginning authors, I tried to emulate the style of the writers I admired the most: Willo Davis Roberts, Candace Ransom, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and others. However, my writing was never as good as theirs. Or my story premise was not as strong. Or my characters weren’t fully developed. I’d get frustrated or bored and quickly move on to another story. Over the years, at any given time, I had three or four active stories and a myriad of others waiting “in the wings” to be written. None of them ever made it past just a few pages of writing.

By the time I got to high school, my writing was something I was very secretive about and protective of. I didn’t see writing as something that could be done as a profession and, not only that, I was embarrassed by something I didn’t understand: writing was a compulsion for me. I had to write. I couldn’t help but write. I was like a drug addict trying to hide her problem from her family. I didn’t talk to anyone about it. I wouldn’t tell anyone about what I was writing. My family knew I wrote, but I think they thought I’d eventually grow out of it.

For my English class my senior year of high school, I was fortunate enough to be allowed to take Creative Writing. Our first major assignment for that class was to write a short story. This was a difficult undertaking for me. To that point in time, all of my story ideas were novel length, to rival War and Peace. I struggled to write a story that would fit into the ten page limit he’d given us, but finally got the story told the way I wanted to and turned it in.

For a week, I waited to find out what the teacher I highly respected thought of it.

The next Monday, he returned the papers to us. With bated breath I took mine. As I saw the red marks on the pages, I started to lose heart. Quickly, I turned to the last page to read the bottom line. What a surprise—and a relief—when I saw not only a large “A+” but that my teacher had written a note telling me that he thought I’d discovered what I needed to do with the rest of my life. Wow, what encouragement for someone who’d never let anyone read her stuff before!

Even after that comment and many more on the remainder of the writing (poetry and drama) that I did in that class, I still didn’t see Creative Writing as something I could actually do as a career. It was a pastime, a hobby . . . something I did in the privacy of my own room and allowed no one else to see much less read.

When I went to college (the first time) and discovered I could major in Creative Writing, I signed up! Unfortunately, never having had any experience with anyone reading my writing except that one teacher in high school, I was completely unprepared for what awaited me. Without getting into all the gory details, my experiences with the two CW classes I took at LSU (Writing the Short Story and Writing the Novel) were so negative that by the time I dropped out of school at age twenty-one, I swore that I’d never let anyone read my writing EVER again.

Did I stop writing? No. As a matter of fact, the few years after I dropped out were some of the most prolific in my life . . . mostly because writing served as therapy for me as I battled recovering from the major depression I’d been in that led me to dropping out. I immersed myself in my fictional world, drawing out all of my emotions, which I could not express aloud, on the page. It was during that time that I started developing the fictional setting that would become Bonneterre, Louisiana, where Stand-In Groom, Menu for Romance, and A Case for Love are set.

By the time I went back to college in 1999, however, the fire that had led me to major in Creative Writing my first time in school was back. I knew that I needed not just to finish my education but also to focus that education on writing. While the school where I completed my undergraduate work didn’t have a CW major, I did have a couple of the most supportive professors I could have hoped for—and the general Creative Writing class was the first course I took upon my return. I knew then that I’d been doing what a children’s song had admonished me not to do: hiding my light under a bushel.

I had come to realize that I had within me the talent and the desire to write. It was time for me to “cowboy up,” put my fears aside, and start doing what I was good at and passionate about, no matter the cost to my emotions or self-esteem.

So that’s why I write.