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Rachel Blaufeld: On Writing

June 16, 2024 | By Women Writers Women Books | Reply More

Many years ago, I lived at home for my first semester of graduate school (until my dad said ENOUGH, but that’s a story for a different day). Anyway, there I was, back in my childhood home, and hosting a group project as if I were in high school.

I’m pretty sure my mom left snacks out.

The project encompassed a large group—around ten or more people of all different ages and ethnicities. We were tasked with recreating a life-cycle event. Ours was a funeral, more specifically the aftermath. We set about bringing a Jewish Shiva together in my parents’ living room. Sitting shiva in the Jewish religion is a week-long mourning period where family and friends comfort one another.

While our motley crew was having their Big Chill moment, I was charged with filming and orchestrating the moment and my parents’ neighbors believed someone actually died. They began to come over and ask if they could help with anything.

Where does all of this intersect with my current role as a Romance Writer?

I’ve always been obsessed with the little details, especially when it comes to the human mind and personality. I guess that’s why I originally pursued a postgraduate degree in clinical social work. While working on my master’s degree, I attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to better understand addiction and recovery, worked in family therapy behind a one-way mirror receiving guidance in group dynamics, and researched bipolar disorder. Pursuing the truth and actively advocating for best treatment practices became a passion of mine.

Since then, I’ve worked in several clinical capacities, eventually winding my way out of social work into small business, freelance writing, and much later Romance, but I didn’t forget my roots. As I began writing diverse and complicated characters, weaving in adversity became my mission. Finding redemption and love was at the core of every heroine and hero I penned despite the challenges. Their early lives may have been difficult, or they experienced extreme trials during coming of age, but they overcame and persevered. I wanted to see broken characters triumph. After all, we all deserve a happy ending.

Being a social worker by nature and professional training, led me to strive for accuracy in researching and writing characters. If I was going to portray an obstacle, I had to get it right. My very first book, Electrified, features a woman who had been married young and abused by her religious husband. With nowhere to turn, she runs to Las Vegas and becomes a stripper. My details were so intricate, I’ve been asked several times if I was ever an adult dancer. I wasn’t, but I did spend time meeting and speaking with dancers. I wanted to get the motives and feelings “just so.” Otherwise, I felt it wasn’t telling the truth.

Overcoming barriers and doing what we must to survive doesn’t make anyone lesser than—in fact, it makes them interesting and a true survivor. Detailing this idea stayed with me throughout all my following stories (eighteen to be exact).

In Redemption Lane, we meet Bess, a recovering alcoholic, and a man from her past. He remembers her, and she doesn’t recall meeting him during what was a tumultuous time in her life. Now clean and sober, Bess is building a basic life for herself. Lane continues to be drawn to the fractured woman, and with his help, she begins to put herself together even more, but the process requires her to do it on her own. The book examines the budding relationship and how it survives the recovery process. When several readers in recovery thanked me for my portrayal and showing love during the course, I knew I’d accomplished my goal.

Most recently, in my latest series, 40s, Love, and Romance, I write about love in the mid-40s and beyond. In The Back Nine, I dove into childhood friends from two different socio-economic worlds and the roles they’d been held to as young adults. Neither one suited by the lives scripted for them, they both re-write their stories later in life. With their own coming of age reckoning and establishing careers behind them, they dig deep to get out from under familial pressures, while falling for one another. With a divorce in both of their pasts and a bicoastal relationship in their immediate future, it takes a tremendous amount of growth. I found myself aching for them at several points during writing this book.

Which brings me full circle to my graduate school funeral project. It feels like the whole picture has always been important to me. Recreating real life obstacles through the story illustrates the nitty-gritty of life. That’s my goal. It’s also why I like to write and read standalone stories. Personally, a cliffhanger makes me feel batty. I need to know what happens to “my people!”

In fact, my writing process involves writing the first two-three chapters and then the epilogue. After I know where my couple starts and ends, I begin to fill in the middle. The challenges of life will always be there in the middle, but the starting and finishing line are what is important. Where we started doesn’t always define where we end up and showing that with my words is my own personal mission.
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Romance that will break your heart and mend it with the promise of everlasting love…

Rachel Blaufeld writes Second Chance at Love Stories. Some of her favorite categories are Middle-Aged, Romantic Suspense, New Adult, Coming-of-Age, and Sports Romance. Rachel lives around the corner from her childhood home in Pennsylvania with her family and two beagles. Her obsessions include running, coffee, basketball, icing-filled doughnuts, antiheroes, and mighty fine epilogues.

https://www.rachelblaufeld.com

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