My guest is romance writer, Emily Greenwood. She focuses on something all writers (published or aspiring) have to deal with at some point or another: Self-Doubt. It's something that can stop a writer in their tracks or they can learn how to overcome it and still be successful.
What’s the hardest thing you've had to face as a writer?
Self-doubt
is probably the worst thing I deal with as a writer.
And unfortunately, from what I know of my own experience and that of other writers, it doesn't go away, no matter how many years you put in.
And unfortunately, from what I know of my own experience and that of other writers, it doesn't go away, no matter how many years you put in.
For
instance, while writing MISCHIEF BY MOONLIGHT, my current release, I felt
certain I would never be able to finish the story—or at least not a story
anyone would want to read, LOL.
I've been writing fiction for eight or nine years now, so I know it’s not always
fun, that it’s work and sometimes you just have to soldier on and put words on
the page. I know I’ll have to write a lot that will ultimately get thrown out
because that’s my process.
But
when I sat down to write MISCHIEF BY MOONLIGHT, the final book in my Regency
Mischief series, I had nothing. Well, OK, I had a blurb that said the book was
going to be about an earl in love with his best friend’s fiancée. The fiancée
wanted to set him up with her sister, so she was going to give him a love potion
and then realize that she had feelings for him herself. But that little
paragraph I’d dreamed up when the book sold as part of a three-book series didn't inspire me now—it downright annoyed me!
Who
cared about this Colin person, the hero, and whether he got together with Miss
Josie Cardworthy? They didn't exist as the fleshed-out characters they now are, so there was nothing to love, no reason to care what would happen when Josie
gave Colin a love potion.
Every time I sat down at the computer, I wanted to jump up and run away. Doubt assailed me constantly: how would I ever come up with a 90 K story about these people? Who did I think I was?
Every time I sat down at the computer, I wanted to jump up and run away. Doubt assailed me constantly: how would I ever come up with a 90 K story about these people? Who did I think I was?
- What did you do and how did you over come it?
In between my disappointing efforts to put down words I
surfed the internet, read other people’s books for “research,” scrubbed the
bathroom floors with toothbrushes so I could make the grout sparkle, and made
elaborate dinners for my family—anything to take me away from The Book That Was
Never Going to Be Written.
I
bought a book on procrastination, which told me that I wasn't procrastinating because I was lazy but because I perhaps had performance anxiety. That was
possibly true—after all, I’d managed to write two books, why shouldn't I be
able to write another one? But it didn't make me able to tell the story. I
worried that I’d have to give back my advance.
So
I got busy forcing myself and wrote page after terrible page. I signed up for NaNoWriMo,
which I’d never done before, and made myself meet the daily word count. The
pages were growing but the story didn't hang together at all, I still didn't care about these characters, and the deadline was getting closer.
So
how did I write this story while self-doubt harassed me all day long? The
answer isn't exciting. There was no magic cure. It was only this:
It took a lot of hard work to write Mischief, and
that’s what writing is—work. Sometimes it’s joyful work, when the words are
flowing from some unknown source, and sometimes it’s nothing but a slog through
the marshes of discouragement. I kept showing up and writing. That’s it. It was persistence, that boring, plodding quality that's probably the main thing that got me published to begin with. I just needed more of it than I ever had before.
- What did did you learn?
I’m very proud of MISCHIEF BY MOONLIGHT now. I hope readers will find MISCHIEF funny and bittersweet and sexy and true.
I’m really happy that I didn't let self-doubt stop me from writing it!
With
the night so full of romance...
Colin Pearce, the Earl of Ivorwood,
never dreamed he'd desire another man's fiancée, but when his best friend goes
off to war and asks Colin to look after the bewitching Josie Cardworthy, he
falls under her sparkling spell.
Who
can resist mischief?
Josie can't wait for the
return of her long-absent fiancé. If only her beloved sister might find
someone, too...someone like the handsome, reserved Colin. A gypsy's love potion
gives Josie the chance to matchmake, but the wild results reveal her own
growing passion for the earl. And though fate offers them a chance, a steely
honor may force him to reject what her reckless heart is offering...
Emily Greenwood worked for a number of years as a writer, crafting newsletters and fundraising brochures, but she far prefers writing playful love stories set in Regency England, and she thinks romance is the chocolate of literature. A Golden Heart finalist, she lives in Maryland with her husband and two children.
-Author website: http://emilygreenwood.net/
-Twitter: https://twitter.com/emigreenwood
