Writing Romance with a Broken Heart

Writing Romance with a Broken Heart

by 

Nan Reinhardt

Okay, so maybe that title is slightly misleading. My heart isn’t actually broken in the lost-love sense of the word, and it’s not actually what medical professionals would refer to as broken either. The real word for my heart is failing. Let me explain.

Six months ago, I finally came to grips with the fact that I was tired…not just a little tired, but more like beat down to my socks before my days even began. Also, I was getting breathless simply walking up the hill from the dock to our lake cottage or around the neighborhood with my friend. Of course, for two years (and probably longer), I blamed this situation on my rather large butt. I’ve always blamed anything that’s wrong with me physically on the fact that I’m fat—not huge, not even clinically obese—just overweight. It’s a battle I’ve fought since puberty. And I do fight it, but genetics will out and my round ass is what it is.

This tired was beyond what I could logically explain away, though, so I spoke to my doc, who did an EKG and immediately sent me to a cardiologist. After a battery of tests, it turns out I have HFrEF (Heart Failure with reduced Ejection Fraction). In plain talk, my left ventricle is not doing its job well at all—nothing to do with size of my butt, it’s just my heart’s crazy issue. It can’t be cured, but I’m being treated with the first line of defense—a 4-drug protocol that my cardiologist will ratchet up over time. In a few months, I’ll be on the maximal dosage of all four meds for HFrEF, and hopefully my heart will respond by getting stronger. That’s the goal.

Now, I totally get the irony of a romance author with a failing heart—it’s the stuff of dark comedy, isn’t it? However, my heart isn’t really what I want to talk about. I want to talk about continuing to write among the turmoil and distress of a frightening health diagnosis. One would imagine that the whole world would stop and one would laser focus on one’s body. For a couple of weeks, okay, maybe three or four, that’s what happened. When I sat down to write, I wasn’t there. My mind was a blank and for the first time in my writing life, I was totally blocked. 

My focus had become what if. What if I fall over dead while I’m out walking in the ’hood? What if I never get to see Grandboy graduate from college? From high school? What if I don’t get to see him get married or get to meet my great-grands? What will become of Husband if my heart stops and I die in my sleep? What if I die before I finish this novel? And the next one? What if I can’t write anymore because I’m too terrified of dying young and the creative well is permanently empty? I was feeling fragile and afraid and like time was short.

But as I learned more about my condition, that I wasn’t going to die tomorrow and that science is working every day to discover new ways to fix HFrEF, the what ifs began to change. What if I use this situation to push more emotion into my writing? What if there’s a way to channel all this fear into my stories? What if I find solace in my little fictional town of River’s Edge? What if I stop feeling sorry for myself and just write… anything? I started with a blog about the HFrEF diagnosis—just the facts—a straightforward telling of my situation. I got it all out. The response was touching and heartening. So many readers and writers and folks I know posted wonderful words of encouragement in the comments. 

They gave me the shove I needed to get back to the business of writing my River’s Edge stories and as I finished book 3 of my Weaver Sisters trilogy, something magical happened. The well I thought had been emptied by learning that I am in heart failure began to fill up. The fear of dying young didn’t vanish, but it got pushed aside as the story poured out of me, and the next series’ characters, The Walker Family, started shouting for their stories to be told. 

It was all about just do it, and realizing that even though my body might not be as strong as I want it to be, my creativity is still chugging along at a merry clip. And yeah, there are more doctor visits, more blood tests and echocardiograms, more MRIs and CAT scans than I ever imagined I’d have in my lifetime, plus a handful of pills to down each morning and evening. But I’m walking every day, hitting the pool a couple of times a week, watching my diet, and being the most compliant heart patient in the history of cardiology. Why? Because, folks, I have so many stories to tell, and I’ve got the heart to tell them.

—

Nan Reinhardt is a USA Today bestselling author of sweet romantic fiction for Tule Publishing. Her day job is working as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader. However, writing is Nan’s first and most enduring passion. She can’t remember a time in her life when she wasn’t writing—she wrote her first romance novel at the age of ten and is still writing, but now from the viewpoint of a wiser, slightly rumpled woman in her prime. Nan lives in the Midwest with her husband of 49 years, where they split their time between a house in the city and a cottage on a lake.

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Home to River’s Edge (The Weaver Sisters Book 1)

She’s determined to start a new chapter, so why is she still drawn to a man from her past?

When Jasmine Weaver, the chief of staff to a powerful D.C. congresswoman, chose integrity, she didn’t anticipate ringing in the New Year disgraced, unemployed, and sleeping in her childhood bedroom. Now back in River’s Edge, Indiana, identical triplet Jazz has her sisters’ support while she plans her next steps. She agrees to lead the committee for their high school’s fifteenth reunion, never dreaming that her co-chair is the man who broke her teenage heart.

As the new CEO of Walker Construction, Elias Walker has taken the family business to new levels of success. He’s buried himself in work to ease the grief of losing his fiancé several years earlier and wants nothing more than to be a carpenter again. Elias grudgingly agrees to co-chair the high school’s reunion committee, but when Jazz Weaver blows into town, suddenly anything seems possible.

These high school sweethearts have lived half their lives apart. Can they reinvent themselves back in the town where it all began?

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Category: On Writing