Saturday 13 February 2010

Romance and Valentine's Day

As today is Valentine's Day I thought I'd blog about why I write romance and where I am now with my writing.


I often wonder if it was because I was born on Valentine's Day that I love romance so much, but really I just can't help it. Whether it's a book or a film, I just love romance and want to immerse myself in it all the time.



I was in my late teens when I discovered Mills and Boon romances. I read as many of the historical romances as possible and one day wondered if I could write one. So I sent away for the guidelines, then in the form of a cassette and made quite a few attempts at my own romance, but these early scribbles remained just that. It was all so much harder than I thought.



As life moved on, my desire to write was put to one side, but I always read as many romance novels as I could. I married and had two children and it was when my youngest was two the need to write resurfaced and I applied for a home study course on creative writing. This took me from article writing, to short stories and onto the novel, where I had to submit the first chapter of my novel, which was of course a romance.



Shortly after, I met Brenda, who was starting a writing group in our village, the group, Cwrtnewydd Scribblers is still going now after over seven years. As a group we looked at writing romance and had local published author, Liz Fielding join us for a workshop. Liz writes for Mills and Boon's Romance line and we had just a few hours in which to gain an insight into what goes into a romance novel. This was when the need to write romance became ever stronger and I soon had three chapters completed. This time my story was aimed at Mills and Boon's Romance line - or Tender as it was then.



Liz Fielding also introduced me to Kate Walker's 12-point guide to Writing Romance. In this wonderful book, I discovered that Kate Walker was tutoring a course, for Writers Holidays in nearby Fishguard. In fact I shall be there again next weekend.



Ever since that first course, I have been completely dedicated to writing a romance which will hopefully, one day, be just what an editor at Mills and Boon is looking for and have now completed four books with the last three being aimed at their Modern line.


So really, you could say that writing romance has been a lifelong ambition of mine. Have you an ambition that has been with you since childhood? Maybe you have achieved yours?

6 comments:

  1. Happy Birthday Rachael - and I'll see you at Fishguard next week as well! Ohhh how exciting! Caroline x

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  2. That's good news Caroline. Can't wait!

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  3. me too, rachael, i will need a hand to hold :/

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  4. Judith and Rachael - we can all hold hands together - I'm no astrologer but...I think it's going to be fun next week! Yay!

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  5. Happy belated birthday Rachael. I didn't know you are a Valentine's baby - you share that with Susan Napier. Let's hope it's a good omen for the future

    See you Friday - you too Caroline and Judith

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