I’m Breaking-Up with my ‘First Love’: The Romance Market & Narrative Style

(I mentioned before that I’m no longer writing for the romance market, but the general fiction market. I didn’t explain this decision fully though. So I decided to write a post about it. Also, you’ll find an excerpt of my rewritten manuscript towards the end of the post).

A few years back my mom made a remark that I considered to be absolutely crazy. She said: “You know, one day, you might not want to write romance novels.” To me, this remark was tantamount to telling a woman, who is head-over-heels in love: “You know, one day, you might fall out of love with him.”

I thought her remark ridiculous, outrageous because for the past NINE years I had invested so much (time-wise, emotion-wise, mind-wise) into the idea of writing for the romance market. I therefore heatedly defended my ambition, saying, “NO, MOM. I”LL NEVER STOP WRITING ROMANCE NOVELS. TRUST ME.” Back then, I was so convinced that the romance market and I were “meant to be.”

However, the past two years of my life has changed me – and in changing me, life has changed my writing. I went from writing HISTORICAL-ROMANCE in THIRD-PERSON PAST-TENSE to GENERAL FICTION (historical-women’s fiction, to be more specific) written in FIRST-PERSON PRESENT-TENSE.

For six years, I experienced a DEEP dissatisfaction with TRC. The conventions through which I expressed my story felt like an awkward fit. Something just wasn’t right. I nevertheless REFUSED to consider that another genre and another narrative style might better suit the story. Come to think of it, I was afraid of stepping out of my COMFORT ZONE (romance genre, third-person, past-tense). And it was only after I ‘LET GO’ of what I was comfortable with that my writing evolved into a style that no longer reflected the 18 year-old writer (which is when I first began to write TRC) but the current 20-something year-old writer.

Considering the dramatic shift in my writing, I asked myself – What led up to my decision to ‘let go’ of the story written by the 18 year-old me? Tracing back my journey as a writer I realized that life and writing are tied closely together (duh, June).

The past two years were SO eventful, resulting in the MOST dramatic changes in my writing journey as well.

Here are some of the events that I think partly influenced my decision to switch markets and narrative styles: I fell HARD for a guy that embodied the sort of hero I idealized in my romance writing, I got my first taste of betrayal, I went through a man-resenting phase (don’t worry, I’m now totally into guys again), I realized that even though wounds heal they still leave a scar, I outgrew the rose-tinted glasses through which I once viewed people, I learned that friendship and all other relationships outside the sphere of romance is EQUALLY as important…

MOST importantly, I LEARNED THAT PUBLISHING AIN’T EVERYTHING. It doesn’t define me. Writing is only ONE of the MANY ways in which my life is given meaning. This isn’t to say that I’m any less determined to publish. Because, dear readers, I am SO determined. All I’m saying is that when someone asks me: “Who are you?” My immediate answer will no longer be: “A writer.” I won’t consider myself a failure if I don’t publish.

All these life lessons taught me to let go of my expectations and embrace the truth that the story I want to tell (which is about romance/love, but also about family, society and religion) just doesn’t meet the expectations demanded by the romance market. And, in embracing this truth, for some reason, I was able to LET GO of the the third-person past-tense narrative that I was holding onto SO fiercely (seriously, only people who have been writing in this style for years can understand how unsettling it is to try writing in any other form).

Now, writing TRC for the general market in first-person present-tense, I feel as person might when she’s finally discovered the MOST comfortable and supportive pair of shoes. One day I might need to find a new pair – but for now, I’m QUITE satisfied.

Here’s some music to listen to as you read the excerpts

The opening scene in the ORIGINAL manuscript:

His boot heels rang against the cobblestone street, which glistened in the light rain. Street lamps did little to ward away the shadows of the evening, leaving his countenance unreadable beneath the brim of his hat. Only when the cheroot he smoked glowed did it light his features enough to reveal a pair of gray eyes.

The gentleman slipped a miniature portrait out of his pocket and inspected the face of a young woman no older than sixteen. It was not a beautiful face, for it was too narrow, the cheeks too prominent, and the chin too pointed. But that was easily substituted by the restrained animation which seemed to brim over in her clear brown eyes and the arch of her lips. Finally, after all these months, he had found her.

Reaching the threshold of the brothel, he carefully tucked away the portrait, and glanced up. The small letters above the door read Harleton House.

‘She should be two-and-twenty by now,’ he thought, and dropped the cheroot. Its stub hissed in a puddle before he ground it out with his heel. He raised his fist and knocked on the door of what he’d been told was one of the best houses in Brighton. It was soon opened by the keeper of the establishment who, upon seeing how well the stranger was dressed, favoured him with a fawning smile. “Good evening, sir.”

The opening scene in the REWRITTEN manuscript (mind you, this is a rough draft *edit* this is no longer the opening):

Bessie tells me that I am a good woman, the most ‘goodly whore’ in Brighton. I think so too, though at times I gaze at my reflection and there is a sickening feeling at the pit of my stomach. It’s the feeling a mother might have when carrying a stillborn in her womb. But Bessie looks at my shell and sees only the winsome façade. Whenever she walks into my chamber, she comes to lay her trampled spirit upon me, never wondering what lies behind my smiles.

“Do you think there’s something the matter with me?” Bessie asks one evening, sitting down at the edge of my bed. The flush climbs up her neck and slowly spreads across her cheekbones. “Kitty says there must be. She says I only ever attract the old and nasty creatures.”

Rather than sharing that I too feel as she does – wretched – I simply reply, “There is nothing the matter with you.” That is how we are, Bessie and I; she voices the emotions that I would rather suppress. She calls out her demons, while I try to forget mine.

“What do you think Kitty said to me? Only guess,” Bessie goes on. “She says I have the face of a horse!”

“Lord, what a malicious tongue that slut has.”

Bessie lifts her hand then lets it fall, her voice barely able to conceal her misery. “You also think I’m hard on the eye. You do think so, don’t you.”

“I don’t think that. Truly.” Knowing this conversation can go on for longer yet, I pick up my shawl, throw it around myself and walk towards the door. “Come Bessie, ‘tis half past five. We’d best start out now or we shan’t have a shilling’s worth by nightfall.”

We make our way downstairs, past Madam’s watchful eyes, and out the door. With our colorful dresses, we look like exotic birds against our gray and lifeless surrounding. The sky is hidden behind the smoke and the crumbling walls. The earth is suffocated by the partially paved streets, covered with refuse and pools of foul waste. A boy gathers his meal of potato parings and rotten vegetables from the ground. He passes by a half-naked woman, whose mouth is agape, lying on a flight of steps with a bottle of gin.

I absorb this all with utter indifference, and turn to Bessie, as she calls my name…

(I’m aware that not all readers will appreciate the drastic changes that I’ve made with the story. But, sadly, I can’t please everyone)

Dear Reader,
Care to share about how much your own writing has changed over the years?

Growth Pain – Even Writers Get Them

The first pang of growth pain that I felt as a writer was with The Runaway Courtesan. For almost four years now, I worked on TRC, and while I revised the story several times, the original structure of the story remained. The very story I wrote at eighteen was the very story I was fixing by the age of twenty-one. It was only a year later that I realized that this was a problem. It’s like a twelve year old trying to squeeze her feet into the shoe that she wore at the age of three. Just as the passing of time made her feet grow, time has made me grow psychologically and intellectually—especially after entering into university.

Somehow I didn’t realize this – trying to squeeze feet into an infant’s shoe – was what I was doing. But it was. I would read over TRC, feel a deep sense of dissatisfaction, but no matter how much I tweaked the story, I would still remain dissatisfied. And yet I remained wilfully blind to the answer of what I had to do with the manuscript.

I love the story; don’t get me wrong—I’ll still cry as I read Amanda and Lucas’ story. And though the second half of the story needs to be worked on I’m happy with it, and it’s most likely because I wrote it when I was older. Others noticed this too. They say the story blooms in part two. But in the first half, there was something about the character’s personalities, their thought process, their belief system….that was somehow immature.

Our Writing Group

It didn’t dawn me until my editor Kerrie told me that a rough draft is a rough draft. A rough draft is getting to know your characters. From there you write from scratch. I’m sure it differs from other writers, especially those who have written several books before and are now able to write a decent first draft. But what Kerrie told me was something I needed to be told. For four years I was clinging onto the words written by an eighteen year old. There were so many memories attached to my original draft that I ignored the obvious: Rewrite. The past agent interested in my work asked me to rewrite. The rewriting I thought I was doing was actually tweaking.

The second pang of growth pain hurt much more than TRC. With TRC I was more excited than agonized by the thought of rewriting. The acknowledgement that I needed to rewrite the first half of the story from scratch was liberating. But this second growth pain occurred recently as I was trying to get back into working on book 2: Fall of the Sparrows.

After two years of studying English Literature, it’s difficult to look at writing the same way. For nine years I’ve loved writing romance. For nine years I’ve loved writing flowery prose. For nine years I’ve loved writing in chronological order. But after reading and falling in love with contemporary lit – I found myself writing the old way that I do while glancing longingly at the writing style that is minimal, “indifferent and impartial” (as Sapphire put it), and a story with a broken timeline, and a romance that doesn’t always work out, or is an un-romanticized romance, or where romance is minimal and the focus is on other issues in humanity.

Not that the said attributes are what constitutes modern literature per se. But, nevertheless, I’m coming to find the qualities of modern/post-modern literature more and more attractive. And this thought frightened the heck out of me for some odd reason. The thought of me departing from the romance genre. The thought of me trying to break away from a writing style that suited me as an eighteen year old. I guess the fear came in part from me questioning myself—if I could actually succeed in this different realm of writing.

But I’m all good now. I think I was doubting myself because I hadn’t been writing for so long because of school. Now that I started writing again, the question of how I’m to write  doesn’t matter so much anymore, but rather, my focus has returned to: I love writing so much that as long as I can write and share my story that’s all that really matters in the end.

But.

There is one thing that has not changed in the nine years of writing.

My love for writing about history.

I once told my mom that I would never stop writing stories set in England’s past. Maybe one day I’ll write about Canada’s past. Or some other country’s past. But the past… There’s just something about history that makes my heart beat madly against my chest. Not the history of events per se, but the history of people. A history of people making decisions. A history of people rising and falling. A history of people fighting, loving and dying. Maybe it’s the fascination for people who thought so differently to us—and yet, at the same time, knowing that human nature has remained pretty much the same. Or maybe it’s this feeling of detachment, history being forever lost to us, and yet, at the same time, engraved within us—and therefore allowing myself to tell a story less restricted within my awareness of the present cultural context. I don’t know. I’m not even sure if I’m making sense. I guess it all comes down to: The past is always so much more romantic.

Dear Readers, What has and has not changed for you as a writer?

Listening to:

Here are some of the tweets/FB updates to summarize why I was not updating my blog for the past while:

Stephen Dedalus from ‘A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST…” always seems like he’s high on drugs.

I need to sleep so I stop missing classes. So my hand automatically picks up PORTAITS OF A YOUNG ARTIST. Hmm…

ugh, just finished my european history paper. Just brutal. Let me say that I’m doneee with feminism

Another successful all nighter. Am now at Starbucks #amwriting in my journal before working on history paper # 2

I am so burnt out. Mention the name “James Joyce” and I’ll burst into tears!

Looking over history lecture notes. Can you find where my mind (half-asleep) began to think about creative writng?: “…who controls the land, had existed even before 1663, under their part, land divided up as small plots, until he realizes the he has captured beauty…”

Faulk it, I’m not reading William Faulkner ‘Sound and the Fury’.

Discovering so many stirring assertions while doing my readings: “…men were born free yet everywhere they are in chains.” -Rousseau

Dear Rebecca Black, please make a song about TUESDAY! While Friday is a day of partying, Tuesday is the day of liberation. Why? Because that’s when I finish my last exam. Woooooo

Writing Tip: Live, Learn, Record

Two days ago, I was struggling to write about Lenore Winstead (from  Fall of the Sparrows) recalling the death of her husband. I was at school working this scene, coming up with the most stereotypical emotions. I just wrote and wrote, not really feeling emotionally attached.

On that very day I came home and asked my younger sister where my younger brother was. She told me he’d been in bed all day long. That pushed the alarm button for me. I went into his room, it was pitch black. I sat by his side and rested my hand on his shoulder. He was feverish and trembling slightly…

As I don’t live with my knowledgeable parents I was left to think the worst—especially after listening to his small voice explaining to me how his throat was all swollen and it pained him to swallow. I was afraid to leave his side, worrying that his throat would swell to the point of being unable to call for my name!

(Before I go on, maybe I should explain that his fever was due to his having caught the chickenpox and his trembling was due to to the fact that my hand was resting on the back of his shoulder, feeling the resounding thump of his steadily beating heart. I took him to the doctor yesterday morning–all is well).

Now, to the writing bit. The dread and concern I experienced offered me a glimpse of what my heroine must have felt: To watch her husband dying while realizing that she had loved, but had not loved well. And then to wonder why it is only when a dear one is in their most vulnerable state that we realize we had not loved them enough.

And so I’m coming to learn more and more that through the variety of hardship experienced—whether it be minor or major—it turns out that hardship allows a writer to deeper understand what they write about: Life, love and death.

Hardship, for me, is the period in which my sensitivity is at its peak. I feel great things because my heart is open and vulnerable. And much of what I write during these times is where my best writings come from.

Hardship, for me, is an opportunity. An opportunity to learn and grow.

Deeper insight into life is like breathing life into a once one-dimensional character.

Have you ever had a similar experience where you suddenly found yourself inside the shoe of a character you were writing about?

 Writing Udate: I’m sweating blood with Fall of the Sparrows. Revising this story was going well until I reached the point in the story where I was just overwhelmed. Though the first draft is complete, I need to rewrite a lot. So, why was I overwhelmed?

1) The story is dark–and not just dark, PITCH BLACK.

2) The story later revolves around a controversial issue that leaves me low spirited.

3) I realized that this story had overstepped and escaped from the genre I’ve always been writing in: Romance. FOTS is more of a general fiction, as the story’s focus is mainly on the broken father/son relationship.

And so I find myself glancing longingly back at The Runaway Courtesan. For this story, I know what needs to be improved, I love the characters, I know what genre it belongs to, and importantly, this story isn’t as dark and heavy. But then I’m worried that if I start working on TRC I’ll lose touch with all the surge of inspiration for FOTS.

Don’t get me wrong. I love, love FOTS. But I’m wondering if this project isn’t a bit too ambitious for me. And I’m also wondering whether I’m just being a moron by shrinking away from the challenge presented to me by FOTS.  

So, I’m totally divided here and would love some advice.



Summer Wrap-Up

1. I officially finished writing the first draft of ‘Be Still, My Heart’ at 80,000 words. The last two chapters were somewhat rushed; it was more forced than inspired. In retrospect, the mental state I was in while trying to finish the story off was that of an athlete nearing the finish line of a 1000000000 meter race: She is no longer running because she finds running pleasurable, but because running now shoots pain throughout her body, and she just wants to cross that darn finish line!

After three months of almost non-stop writing (my usual day: I write as soon as I wake up, keep writing till I go to bed, and then dream about writing), I was so near completing the story, buuuuut, lo-and-behold, I fell into a deep rut. I couldn’t figure out how to end the story even after hours and days of brainstorming. I really, really didn’t want an unfinished draft haunting me while I’d be “trying” to study for school. So I strained myself to force out the last two chapters. I’m actually O.K. with it. Now I’m going to put BSMH through a brief revision before putting it aside for a month or two while I work on The Runaway Courtesan.

2. As I said on Facebook/Twitter: Met up with my new editor, Kerrie McCreadie, to discuss TRC. She tore my story apart! ….And inspired me big time. I’m going to have so much fun rewriting TRC. Seriously: harsh & honest editor = priceless. During our discussion on how I might improve TRC, the imaginary light-bulb above my head glowed brighter and brighter. Kerrie offered sooo many great suggestions. I always had this dissatisfaction with the first half of my manuscript. A dissatisfaction that grew when dear Savannah Foley read my manuscript and said that my story bloomed in the second half of the story. This meant that she also felt what I felt: part 1 was lacking something

….But I continued to remain in denial. I told myself TRC could not be changed. The story, I felt, was etched in stone. The thought of having to break the story apart and re-piece it together was horrifying! But after reading Kerrie’s critiques, I now realize that it must be done. Much of the writing in the first half reflects upon the immaturity of the 18-year-old self that wrote it. 3 years have passed since–it’s time to update the story. I want to love the first half as much as I do the second.

3. Books I read during the summer (This is a bad habit, but I write more often than I pleasure-read, and when I do read for fun, I binge-read):

The Queen’s Fool by Phillipa Gregory
Cristina drove over to my place and gave me this book—I love her random presents. I began reading it that day and finished it two days later. This is the first Gregory book I’ve read; I must say, I am not a fan of her writing style. It’s just not my cup o’ tea. Also, I found myself skimming, mainly because I had little sympathy for the heroine—she’s way too feministic and stubborn for my liking. So, is the book not worth reading? The fact that I read Queen’s Fool in two days should be telling enough. It IS worth reading. It’s an intriguing enough story. I only wish there was more character development. Too much history, too little character development–it’s an unbalanced pattern I’ve noticed in other historical fictions. *cough* Forever Amber (the same whiny heroine from start to finish) *cough*

World Without End by Ken Follett
I was disappointed with this sequel. Compared to the magical, medieval epic, Pillars of the Earth, WWE falls short. I did not finish the book. I stopped 3/4th into it. I was expecting it to be GREAT after reading some reviews about how WWE was more fast-paced and exciting that PotE. I, on the other hand, felt that WWE dragged much of the time. Maybe it’s because I didn’t like the characters… Ugh, I sound like such a picky reader now. Anyway, maybe I’ll convert in opinion of WWE if I ever get to the end of the book.

 Byron: Life and Legend by Fiona McCarthy
For a biography meant to capture the life of a decadent and notorious lord, this book was slightly on the dry side. The first half was interesting, but throughout the latter half of the bio, my interest waxed and waned. What I really appreciated in the book, however, were the snippets from Byron’s letters. I can’t imagine myself writing emails to a friend as Byron wrote letters to his. In one of the letters, he is pondering over the loss of his mother, whom he loved and hated:

There is to me something so incomprehensible in death, that I can neither speak or think on the subject. –Indeed when I looked on the Mass of Corruption, which was the being from whence I sprang, I doubted within myself whether I was, or She was not.”

…So deep. It’s like he was writing a letter while knowing it would be read by the public one day.

4.  When I went camping at Bruce Peninsula Park, I was reminded again why I love writing so much. Never in my life was I more stunned by nature’s beauty than when I saw The Grotto. A group of friends and I followed the stream of people, climbing down the mountain of rocks, so that we might see the cove with our own eyes. It was beautiful! There was a pool of deep, deep water inside. Water that glowed aqua blue (I’m guessing a shaft of light was passing through a hole above or under water to give this effect). Then, for as long as I could, I sat on a massive rock outside the cove and watched the waves crashing, smashing powerfully against the cliffs. Such depth, such danger, such power—I felt so belittled. And it made me rather meloncholic, seeing such great beauty, and knowing it’ll all fade away into a mere memory. That was when I remembered this: I am a writer. My melancholy disappeared immediately, because I knew i would never leave this place; words would capture the moment—the sound, the smell, the feeling— and I would be able to relive this day whenever I desired.

5. My summer is officially over. School starts this Monday. Time to return to nerd-mode. Man-oh-man, I am super excited to return back to university! One of the classes I’m especially excited about is my Indigenous Literatures of North America course. It’s an introduction to:

Indigenous North American writing in English, with significant attention to Aboriginal literatures in Canada. The writings are placed within the context of Indigenous cultural and political continuity, linguistic and territorial diversity, and living oral traditions. The primary focus is on contemporary Indigenous writing.

A few summers back, I began volunteering in Shawanaga, a wild and rugged native reserve, and ever since I’ve been fascinated with their culture. When I went this year, one of the memorable moments was when a friend and I ventured out in the middle of the night to go to the washroom (our group was sleeping at a church that night—there was no washroom). After surviving the outhouse, we ran through the darkness, across the dewy grass, and stopped by the pow-wow ground. What made the moment so magical was that you could hear the pow-wow music, its singing and drumming, echoing eerily from the moonlit arena. I half expected to see feathery shadows of dancers circling the dance arena, but we were told that the singers were practising for this week’s pow-wow by playing last year’s recording.

And how has everyone else’s summer been? Got a lot of writing/reading done?

P.S. CONGRATULATIONS to Kat Zhang, a very young and talented author, who landed an agent!!!!! She’s one of the fortunate few (?) whose perfect agent wasn’t the 1000000000th one she queried to. I think she began querying this summer…and got repped…this summer! Read her story for the juicy details.