Nikki: I really, seriously don’t think you need the English degree to be a writer. In fact, having experience in other areas brings so much to your imagination and your wealth of knowledge. Now, taking specific writing courses, like the workshops offered by RWA, can be good for sure.

But the best way to learn good storytelling is in the trenches. By that, I mean reading a lot, writing a lot, and learning to feel the rhythm. It’s obvious from your posts that you know how to write well. Now, you just have to study the craft and experiment.

I hope you enjoy those books!

Thank you so so much for your comments. They are printed and stuck to my wall never to move again… .

Predictably all of the texts you were kind enough to list will soon be invading my home thank you for recommending them. I found your comment about your studies interesting, I don’t have a degree in English (I’ve been down the business road) and I’ve always wondered if that’s what’s missing , but at the same time when I read course descriptions they don’t sound right and now I know why! So thank you so much for clarifying that, you may have just saved about five years of my life lol! No doubt my internal debate will continue over whether to study or not to study but I think I’ll try a few of the other more specific writing courses I’ve stumbled across first.

I love that I’m not the only one who pouts when getting criticism! Draws get a good work out here.

Thanks for sharing the judges comment about the heroine driving to the first scene, I’d never given it any thought before and I would have popped it in there without hesitating before reading that! Which worries me a bit because it seriously begs the question: what else am I missing here?! Lol.

I’m off to worship your first chapter

Thanks again!

Nikki.

I pretty much feel the same! Though I have thought about it a lot, like you–just sort of waiting until the decision is upon me. Looking into websites, many companies are 3 months out from even getting to you after you contact them, so I was looking around at info. But . . . until the call comes . . . well, you know how it goes.

Your name does stand out as it is, though. Catchy. Nice.

Love your call story!!! How wonderful! Get that full finished and in!

Will you write under Lynne Raye Harris?

MARIAN

Thanks Lidia and Kelly! I agree with you on the steps. Every time you think you’ve reached a new level, there’s something new to learn. Being open to new ideas is how you grow, I think. And yet, as you said, you also have to trust your instincts. If you constantly change your writing because a contest judge or a CP, or even your mother, tells you this or that doesn’t work, then you’ll never get a feel for the rhythm and how YOU write.

Nikki: Thanks again for the congrats! Hmm, you asked about tools that have helped me grow into the writer I am now. Well, I’m still growing. That’s first. Second, I don’t think there are any specific tools that I can tell you about. There have definitely been personal “aha!” moments for me, and those help tremendously.

But, I’ll tell you the basics and you can decide. Like so many who want to write, I have the English degree. I have a master’s degree with a concentration in English Lit (don’t know what the equivalent to that is outside the US, but it’s after the first 4 years and before you get a doctorate). I don’t think this degree helps me in the least little bit as far as being a fiction writer. It certainly helped me in that I wrote a lot of papers for my courses. And that I was forced to read classic literature. Not that you want to emulate Hardy or Faulkner in your writing style! But reading the classics certainly helps with a sense of story. Or did for me anyway.

Most importantly, I think, is that you must read — and read widely. Read the line you want to write for! Read stuff that interests you, even if it’s completely removed from romance writing. The more you see good language in use, the more you absorb it.

As for specific texts, yes there are a few that I feel helped me. Dwight Swain’s Techniques of the Selling Writer. Debra Dixon’s Goal, Motivation, Conflict. Leslie Wainger’s Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies. Stephen King’s On Writing. Renni Browne and Dave King’s Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

You asked how to turn negative feedback into gems of opportunity. Well, I can’t claim perfection there! I’ve certainly put the entry away and pouted for a while! But then, some little thing will keep nagging me, and I’ll reread the comments. You can usually safely discard comments that say stuff like, “I hate your hero! He’s childish!” without telling you WHY he’s childish. Yes, I once had a judge tell me my heroine was juvenile. But she pointed out why. Every instance, and I could see it so well.

Another comment I got had to do with where the story started (often a trouble spot when you’re unpublished and trying!). My heroine was driving, thinking about how she’d gotten to this point in her life. The judge told me that if the heroine is driving in the first scene, she’s usually driving to the beginning of the story. LOL! I cut that scene, reworked the next one, and that story is my current Golden Heart finalist (there were other rewrites, but the beginning is exactly what that judge told me was the beginning).

Anyway, this is getting long, but I wanted to answer you with as much information as I thought might help.