I’m still getting used to the technology of blogging, website maintenance, tweeting and using social media in general. So that’s my new year resolution: to get more proficient at posting interesting things and to do so more often.

Meantime, the squirrel who’s been running around the tree outside my window with a plastic water bottle has finally gone to bed. Very distracting.

I start with an idea, a theme, a vision. Characters in a difficult situation. And issue or statement to make. An empty space in the yard. Then I cast around in my mind and in my notes and references for ways to fill out and fill in the basics. I always intend to create an outline for each story, a diagram for each flower bed because I know it will save time, energy, frustration and heartache to plan ahead.

Usually, I start strong. I’ll have my characters broadly sketched and the conflicts they have to deal with set up. I’ll have my plant lists and a scale drawing of the flower bed or border. Then impatience kicks in and instead of completing my outline or diagram, I – figuratively or literally – dig in. After all, how am I supposed to really get to know my characters and feel their conflicts if I don’t start writing? How am I supposed to see how the various plants on my list will go together if I don’t start planting them?

If you’re a storyteller (written or oral) or a gardener, you no doubt have anticipated what happens next. In fact, if you have a modicum of the sense I seem to abandon shortly after starting a project, you can guess what happens next. Not always, of course, but often enough so you’d think I’d learn.

It’s messier and tougher on the back to un-plant a disorganized flower bed than it is to fix a manuscript that’s gone off the rails, but the principles are pretty much the same: figure out what’s wrong and change what isn’t working so that it’s more in line with what it was supposed to be in the first place. As the carpenters say: “Measure twice, cut once.” 

More on this dual subject in the future. Or at least, that’s what I’m planning to do.

Jeff walks you through the development of characters that will be three-dimensional and interesting, then walks you and your characters through the creation of plots that suit the characters as well as your chosen genre and your theme. (He’s pretty helpful on figuring out your theme, too.)

Along the way, Jeff draws on lessons learned from novels and screenplays and his examples illustrate his points clearly.

If you’re going to buy only one book about writing, I’d say make it Plot versus Character.

It’s not that I didn’t have any opinions to share before this. (As anyone who knows me will confirm, I’m seldom without an opinion about something.) It’s not that I haven’t had opportunities before this. I’ve been saving myself for this moment.

So, here I am to introduce myself as a storyteller who also gardens, and is bemused to discover that I garden much the way I tell stories. As time goes on and I post more about my approach to writing stories and planting gardens, you’ll see exactly what I mean. I hope you’ll be kind and not laugh at me as hard as my husband does. (Then again, I laugh at him when he can’t find something because it’s A. under something else, or B. behind something else.)

When people ask me what I write, I usually say “romantic fiction” rather than “romance.” (And if they make the mistake of sneering, I launch into an explanation of the importance of pair-bonding to the survival of the species.) Why “romantic fiction”? Well, the romance genre has done some creative pair-bonding with just about every other genre you can name, including literary fiction. And while the  romance is always the heart of my stories, there are all sorts of other things – mystery, suspense, fantasy – going on, too.

I wrote my Master’s thesis on British detective stories of the 1920s and 1930s, the “Golden Age.” I’m a long-time member of Sisters in Crime. I love reading mysteries and pride myself on figuring out who dunnit; you should see the pie chart I did for my thesis! But when I decided to buckle down and put my childhood dream of being “an author” to the test, I turned to the romance genre, not to the mystery genre. Why?

Simple, really. Everyone I know is either in, or wants to be in, a romantic relationship, or was in one that didn’t work out. On the other hand, I’ve never tripped over a dead body and ended up helping the cops solve the crime.

for Lady Moonlight

Romance Writers of America

for Forever Again