Writing the Story I Want to Write

There are a million ways we’ve heard this..write what you know, write from your heart, write your story, write what you want to write… but how often does that statement come with an “Ah-ha” moment?  When someone says, “Write the story you want to write,”  you instantly say, “Well, of course I am.”

I thought the same, until the Ah-ha moment that electricity shot through my brain and that mythical little light bulb popped over my head with a “ding!”  I got it. I understood it, finally.

And here’s the really fun part.  YOU helped make that happen.

When I posted my query letter concepts to show what I was working through and get your feedback, a few things really started singing in my head. (Think Gene Kelly, stomping around in rain puddles, singing at the top of his lungs.)  Someone (and I thank you) commented on the differences of tone in the query letters — one more serious, one lighter and not suspense-y at all.  So I considered that.  What did I want to be? Not so much what the story was right now, but what I did want that story to be?

Then I recalled the Writer’s Retreat that I went to a month past, and the question someone there asked me, “Why the jump from historical romance to suspense thrillers?” in response to my discussing the two roads I was writing along.  I knew the answer to that.  So I added that to the things whirling in the back of my brain.

Then, as I sat down with the words of my query letter and thought… What does all this buzzing in my head mean?

And then, finally, Hubby and I were talking about both the historical romance for this query and the suspense/thriller that I’ve been working on as well.   We watched a few episodes of ALIAS (which by the way, is an incredible study of characterization) and talked about what made Sloane one of the best TV villains of all time, what made Jack Bristow such a complex man… And I considered it all some more.

Then Gene Kelly got obnoxiously loud, and yes, finally, all those little pieces buzzing around started fitting into place.  And the words, “I need to write the story I want to write” took on an entirely new meaning. A personal meaning. A message just for me.  And with that, I realized that the pieces of my writing that I thought were “from a different place” (historical versus suspense) really weren’t.  I realized that the way my stories go (in my HEAD) is darker.  That’s not always the way they end up on paper, especially with the Historicals.   I had this preconceived notion that they should be light-hearted, ala Judith McNaught or Julia Quinn. They were two of my favorite historical writers, so it makes sense I would think I should write that way.

But you know what? Those aren’t the stories I want to write.  I love to read them, but that has nothing to do with what comes from inside of me.

The stories I want to write are not always pretty. I love to discover what makes people tick.  What makes people do the good things they do, and even more so, the bad. I want to dig at character wounds.  I want to find their worst fears and force them to face it. I want to test the best and worst of human behavior.  I want to write relationships that change at a core level, not always for the better. Sure, I can add in some moments of humor, but I don’t want to tie everything up with a nice, pretty little bow — which is a little ironic given the title of this blog.  I realized that the suspense novel seeping out was the deep part of my heart clawing the walls of my “light-hearted historical” thinking brain, saying, “This is what you want to write! THIS!” When I first sat down to write the suspense story, the first chapter came in one sitting.  And as I finished it, I read it again and thought, Wow, this is dark.  Different. I hadn’t stopped to consider what I was writing, I just let it flow.  But I know it’s some of my best writing.  And to be the writer I want to be, I need to honor that.  I can do that. I just have to let that desire breathe.

There’s an upside and a downside to this.  The upside — it clicks.  It totally, completely clicks in my head and makes my fingers itch to start typing.

The downside? Yeah, that story I thought I was almost finished with? Not so much.  The story I want to write is in there, perhaps buried under good intentions, so some destruction is definitely in my future to let it shine. (Kill your darlings, kill your darlings…)