You see, here are my problems:

1. I have been writing romances since I was 12. Now these were only for myself, not for publication. So I have had over 20 years of writing stories where I could do whatever the hell I wanted and that seemed to mostly be concerned with piling as much angst as I could into it. Hey, I didn’t have to please anyone but myself so why not? Flashforward 28 years and I’m still trying to stop myself from piling on the angst. Fear of failure? Sure. Why not add fear of being vulnerable too? Oh yes, and also fear of not being wanted, hating to be protected and stick an unplanned pregnancy in there too. Enough conflict for ya?

2. I HATE being hit over the head with the obvious as a reader. QED, as a writer I am not obvious enough. This combined with a fear of my characters being too self aware, means sometimes the conflict isn’t obvious in the first chapter. And neither is their motivation.

3. I came late to reading romance. I only started reading a lot of it 3 years ago. Up till then, the only romance I read was an M&B binge every 6 months or so. I’ve been trying to catch up on the genre but up until 3 years ago, I didn’t even know a romance had to have an HEA, let alone heroic, aspirational, sympathetic characters.

So these three little problems of mine have all conspired against me. Not only do I over complicate my conflicts so it’s not clear, I am also not obvious about them so readers (and editors!) don’t know what motivates them. Ergo this makes them unsympathetic because if you don’t know what motivates them, you can’t relate to them. Add to that a tendency to want to break the ‘romance’ mould with my characters because I want to do something different (and not knowing what’s ‘acceptable’ and what’s not), and you have a recipe for disaster. And rejection.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, it’s taking me a VERY long time to both be aware of these problems and to overcome them. My latest sub I have tried hard to stick to one conflict for both my characters, made sure it’s clear and have tried to follow it to its conclusion in the synop. I have also tried to make it more obvious in the first chapter. The thing I’m most worried about is my heroine. I’ve – again! – tried to make her different. I hope I haven’t overstepped the mark. She’s spiky and prickly, and kind of rude. There is a reason for this and I’d really like to think I got it across in that first chapter but…

Who knows? Only time will tell I guess. Anyway, it’s back to NTAI for me! Where’s everyone else at?

Why? Because when you get a revision letter that tells you to add more internal conflict, you need to a) know what internal conflict is, and b) how to add it. And unfortunately, that’s where instinct failed me and where I had to put on my big girl pants and actually knuckle down to learn craft. I really didn’t want to. Knowing about character arcs and goals and motivation ruined the spark for me. But, after my partial failed at the first hurdle last year, I knew that instinct wasn’t going to be enough. You can have visions of the wonderful house you’d like to build but if you don’t get the framing right, it won’t stand up.

So then I started unlearning 25 years of writing insinctively, re-learning all the craft stuff and actually paying attention to it. Make sure my characters had conflict, make sure they learned from each other, make sure they changed. And guess what? In the process I DID lose the spark. I was concentrating so hard on making sure everything was in place that I lost sight of my instinct. Even doing these revisions, my characters became cardboard cut-outs that I was moving around. I knew them, but they kept shifting on me (and no, they’re not werewolves. Maybe it would have been easier if they were!), they kept changing.

Maisey then offered some advice (because she’s good like that) – just let it all go. Write from your gut. And so, after six months of learning my craft, I put all the craft stuff aside and wrote the way I used to. By instinct. And sure enough, my characters came alive. I slipped into them and they began to speak not with the words I gave them, but as the people that they truly were.
Hello happy medium!

The idea is that I know my craft better now (and no doubt I will keep learning it) so I can see where something’s going wrong. So I can plot properly. So I get the pace right and the conflict straight. And then I have to write like I don’t. Easy.

Anyone else an instinctive writer and find all this craft nonsense a pain in the rear?