DG Rampton: On Writing

Australia’s Queen of Regency Romance DG Rampton took Ten Years to Write her First Book but Now she’s an Amazon bestseller with over 100,000 downloads.

By D. G. Rampton

People often ask me how I became an author and I have the sense that they expect me to say it was some pre-planned career goal that I had from an early age. That certainly isn’t the case. I’ve loved literature ever since my teacher, Mrs Hall, introduced me to the beauty of the English language in high-school, but I knew that I needed to get a “serious” degree and ended up studying engineering. 

Every so often, as I trudged my way through my twenties climbing the corporate ladder, I would be overcome by the urge to put pen to paper (literally, as this was before computers had taken over the world  – I’m that old!) and I would write down dialogue or paragraphs that would suddenly pop into my head, demanding to be brought to life. I spent many a boring meeting formulating the perfect turn of phrase, on any given subject, purely for the fun of it.

My first proper dabble in writing came about when I was flat-sharing in London with an up-and-coming film director, who inspired me to write a screenplay. He was into Japanese horror films at the time and I suspect he would have taken me more seriously if I’d written something dark and gruesome. But I’m more of a “Pollyanna” rather than “The Ring” type of girl, and as I had many funny anecdotes of what had happened to me as an Australian living in London in the early 2000s I decided to write a romantic comedy based around those experiences. Many years later, that screenplay would become the raw material for my contemporary RomCom, EARL TANGLED WITH STAR . . . and yes, many of the characters and plot-lines are inspired by true events (sadly, not the gorgeous Scottish earl).

After more than a decade in the corporate world, I gave up my career to have my daughter and suddenly I had the free time to pursue my little writing hobby. I blame my decision to write historical romance entirely on the wonderful Mrs Hall, who engendered in me a love of Jane Austen’s writing. And when I discovered the humorous Regency romances of Georgette Heyer my obsession with the Regency period was assured. 

But why romance? I hear you ask. That’s an easy one to answer. Romance stories bring people joy. There’s always a happy ending, and often there’s humour in them that makes people laugh and feel good. And that’s my aim as an author: to make people feel good. My favourite quote of Jane Austen’s sums this up beautifully:

‘Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody not greatly in fault themselves to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.’ 

So, I had my genre picked out – check – and I had the free time – check – so you would expect that my first novel would have taken only a year or two to complete. Wrong! Almost ten years later ARTEMISIA was released into the world. 

It may have taken a decade but this book claimed the number one spot in the Amazon US Regency Historical Romance Best Seller list. As did my second and third books in the

Regency Goddesses Series, as well as other Amazon best seller lists internationally, including in England, Australia and Germany. The trilogy now lays claim to over 100,000 downloads.

Note to anyone wanting to be an author, now that I’m five books in, below are my top lessons on getting a book finished, learnt from my many mistakes:

Writing is a job. As with any job it needs structure. Monday to Friday, 9 am to 3pm, or whatever schedule works for you, but it needs to be a schedule and your family and friends need to know the schedule and respect it. As with any job, you will not be available to chat or attend events during your work day. I also benefit from having a little ritual that I do before the start of my writing day. I clean the kitchen, make myself a hot chocolate and then sit down at my (tidy!) desk. By the time I’ve done all that, my head is in the right place for writing. Everyone’s ritual will be different, but a ritual of some sort really helps to focus the mind.

Do not stop to edit every paragraph you write. It slows down the flow of consciousness and you lose your train of thought. Keep writing, even if you make spelling mistakes or your sentences don’t make sense. You can edit them later, once you have enough on the page to work with.

Believe in yourself. I wasted many years not thinking of myself as a writer as I was trained in another career and so had “imposter syndrome”. I was my own worst enemy in that respect; no wonder my first novel took 10 years! If you have the commitment to write regularly and are putting in the hours, you are a writer. And the more you write the more you will see yourself in this light. 

Give yourself a deadline. Deadlines are great at focusing the mind. When I finally booked myself a freelance editor for my first novel, someone who expected me to stick to a deadline, that gave me impetus to finish. Now, I always create a hard deadline before starting a new book (e.g. by setting up Amazon pre-orders) and I’ve managed to whittle down my writing time to one book per year.

I was so naïve when I first started on this writing journey, I thought that once a book was finished the hard part was over. Sadly, that’s not the case. These days PR, marketing and social media all play a huge role, and it’s taken me years to get to grips with this and build up a following. Being an author is most certainly a long-term game, but as I see it, though it might take years to set the groundwork, once that’s done we can continue to write, and bring people joy, our whole lives. And that makes it all worthwhile.

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D.G. Rampton’s latest book DAPHNE – Re-education of a Duchess is the first in the Taming of the Dukes Series and is out now. 

You can find more about D. G. Rampton’s books here: www.dgrampton.com

Daphne: Re-education of a Duchess (Taming of the Dukes Series)

A new historical romance from the bestselling author of the Regency Goddesses Series.

When heiress Miss Daphne Jones finds herself married to the wrong brother – the black-sheep son of the Duke of Burlington – she has little idea that her groom will promptly disappear after the wedding, and that she’ll become a duchess and a widow before her seventeenth birthday.

Seven years later, the young and somewhat eccentric duchess has found contentment in taking care of her two younger sisters, Isadora and Emmaline, her absentminded brother-in-law, and an ever-growing menagerie of pets. The only thing missing from her life is a child of her own, but as she has finally accepted one of the many proposals to come her way, she feels confident this small detail will soon take care of itself.

However, when her husband is deposited on her doorstep, unconscious but very much alive, her life (and heart!) spirals out of her control, and she is faced with a seemingly insurmountable problem: how does one go about seducing a man who seems determined to treat one with avuncular detachment and is set on an annulment?

BUY HERE

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Category: On Writing