Tackling New Writing Challenges

I’ve been writing contemporary series romance for Harlequin since 2004. I love writing family drama that revolves around a couple falling in love, but after a decade of writing shorter storylines I was growing antsy and wanted to try my hand at writing a “bigger” book.

I spent a year working on a single title proposal for my agent to shop around. The proposal received several rejections—most of them had to do with my heroine, Ruby. Darn Ruby, she just wasn’t lovable. Then one afternoon my agent received an intriguing call from an editor at Berkley/NAL. Danielle Perez offered to take a second look at my proposal if I was willing to take the story in a different direction and make several changes.

You should know that I’m directionally challenged—hang in here with me, there’s a reason I’m bringing this up. As far as disabilities go this one receives little sympathy from the public. And zero compassion from family members who enjoy mocking me with phrases like “you couldn’t find your way out of a paper bag” or “how many test drives did it take you to find the Walgreens around the corner?” And I don’t even want to talk about how often I leave a store at the mall and forget which direction I was coming from before I entered the store. I’m sure my adult children will be purchasing a GPS ankle monitor for me in the next few years so they can track my movements and call the police when they see me driving in circles on their iPhones.

Because I was born without a compass in my brain, I learned early in life not to be afraid of detours. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve driven “off the beaten path”. (This also happens to be the name of my blog). If you’re open to change, taking a detour isn’t necessarily a bad thing once you overcome your initial panic. So when Danielle Perez at Berkley/NAL invited me to revise and resubmit I didn’t hesitate to accept the challenge.

Back to my disability…the upside to always getting lost is that you develop a false sense of courage and cockiness—both come in handy when you’re driving through janky neighborhoods. It’s imperative that you show no fear and fake that you belong there until you find a way out or you might end up in a situation where you lose more than your purse or your car.

So, was I up to the challenge of revising 100 pages and a 20-page synopsis? And yes, my inability to write a short synopsis is also a result of being directionally challenged. If I can’t figure out where I’m going until I get there, how am I supposed to know where my story is going until it’s written—right? Right.

Show no fear kicked in and I began re-working my story and synopsis, but that was just the beginning of a lot of hard work. After I went to contract with The Promise of Forgiveness, the book went through two extensive revisions before my editor was satisfied with the story. The process was the most stressful, exhausting and exhilarating writing experience in my career to date. I divorced my treadmill. Gained weight. And became a Cheetos and Lifesavers Gummy addict.

And I wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything, because I emerged from the wreckage of those revisions a better writer and a better storyteller.

But the hard work doesn’t end once the revisions are approved. Writing in a different genre brings with it much joy and a whole new set of challenges and detours. Authors work incredibly hard to build a readership. I’ve written more than thirty-five projects (books, novellas, online reads) for Harlequin over the course of eleven years. I’ve built up a steady following for my home and hearth stories—God bless my faithful supporters. Series romance readers are among the most generous, giving, caring group of book addicts you’ll ever meet. Without them I wouldn’t have lasted this long in the business. Even though I can count on many of my romance readers giving The Promise of Forgiveness a chance, I still need to find ways to get my book in front of women’s fiction reviewers and bloggers.

Women’s fiction readers are as wonderfully diverse as the books they read, so thank goodness author Sonja Yoerg (House Broken and The Middle of Somewhere) took me under her wing when she noticed me driving around aimlessly on Twitter and Facebook. Sonja introduced me to the fabulous group of talented fiction authors at www.tallpoppy.org whose advice and support in promoting my women’s fiction book keeps me from wandering too far off the path.

The next time you’re faced with a new writing opportunity, put on your Superhero cape and take up the challenge. Quit worrying about how you got there or why. All that matters is that you take a chance on yourself. Because the truth is all you’ve ever wanted is to write a good story—one that resonates with the reader long after they close your book.

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Marin Thomas grew up in Janesville, Wisconsin, and attended college at the University of Arizona where she played center for the Lady Wildcat basketball team and earned a B.A. in Radio-TV. She writes contemporary small-town westerns for Harlequin American Romance (The Surgeon’s Christmas Baby Nov 2015) and contemporary women’s fiction for Berkley/NAL (The Promise of Forgiveness March 2016). Marin and her husband are recent empty nesters living in Houston, Texas, where she spends her free time junk hunting and researching ghost tours.

You can find out more about Marin’s books and her obsession with ghost tours on her blog at http://www.marinthomas.com

Tags: featured, romance writers, women writers, women's fiction

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing