I can still do it…!
Writing|I guess I really shouldn’t be here. Edits have arrived. So has the cover art, but I can’t even think about gleefully squealing about that yet. Too busy. Give me a coupla days! I will start edits tomorrow. I’ve got a list of things to clear today.
Yesterday… well, yesterday I purposely sat down to write something outside of the erotic romance genre. Just a short story for a project I’m working on, which I’d even consider self-publishing, but then I’ve got to write it all first so there’s no panic there, and what do you know, I came up with a more than decent story. Wrote 4000 words as a rough draft straight off. It needs a couple of edit rounds, but I’m well pleased. This may not sound like such an accomplishment if not for the fact that I was feeling nervous about this story.
You see, for the last couple of years I’ve stepped to one side of what I do to concentrate on romance. Not that my romance is so far removed from the way I usually tell stories. However, when writing romance, and especially for the modern market you’ve got to think hot and even ’sizzling’ more often than not, and not all stories need or want that. This story didn’t, and I hadn’t written something like this for so long that I guess I was wondering if I still could. I didn’t even have a totally clear idea how this story would pan-out.
So when I typed the last full-stop, I sat back with a big grin on my face and gave a sigh of relief that I can still do it. I can still dip my feet into other genres, paddle about in murky waters, still write a little twist in the tale, still produce something that markets will likely pigeon-hole as ’speculative’. I love this quirky kind of writing and the one thing I strive for is that I want to take what I learn in one genre and apply it to all the others. Sex doesn’t bother me. It’s a fact of life, get over it. If the story (and market) calls for it, I’ll use it. If it doesn’t, I won’t. At the heart, it’s the story that counts no matter what you’re writing, and I can still write a good story. I’m sounding far too pleased with myself but can’t seem to apologise for it.
