Today, author Tory Richards shares with you her personal journey to authorship….
Write about what you know. Heard that saying before? Well, it wasn’t much, and it certainly wouldn’t have held reader’s interests. I began writing when I was ten, on notebook paper. How much could a ten year old know, and especially about romance? All I knew was that I loved fairytales and I hated school. But I wrote because I loved it, and it was my dream of becoming an author some day. My first book got published when I was fifty. I still didn’t know all that much.
The only consistency in my writing has been romance, even at ten. I didn’t know anything about romance except for the fairytales I loved. I began writing sweet romance and over the course of ten years of being published I’d evolved to erotic romance. The point is that you have to evolve because otherwise your stories would all read the same way. Kind of like the movies on the Hallmark channel, same storyline but with different characters. I’m not bashing the Hallmark channel; obviously I watch it if I know that it exists. I love the endings when the characters finally share that kiss!
Every character has a different story to tell. I can tell you right now that I didn’t know a whole lot about erotic romance so writing about what I know flew right out the window. So I began to read. Inspiration comes from many different avenues, tiny snippets that we somehow build an outline around until it blossoms into a story. Writers never stop thinking about our next plot.
Reading helped teach me about other genres, what boundaries I could push, and how to be a better writer with regard to POV (point of view), word usage, sentence structure and more. I had a serious problem with POV when I first began writing until a kind publisher took the time to explain it to me, and I also bought a book. If you want to hone your craft than read, read, read, and don’t be afraid to ask for advice.
I write for me. I’ve known authors who gave it up because they weren’t making enough money. I thought, how sad, but then realized that they wanted to write as a job. Than I could understand how they felt. If you’re in it because it’s a passion and something you do for enjoyment than you probably won’t be disappointed in those small royalty checks. The truth is that you’re doing something that you love.
It took me ten years, and after I retired, before I was making good money on my craft. I’m not going to lie, the royalty checks are nice, but it’s not the reason I write. A lot of my books are free. I hadn’t set any goals, had no real expectations, I just enjoyed sharing my stories with those who were interested enough to read them.
Thanks for letting me share my thoughts with you today.
Tory’s Web site
Tory Richards – http://www.toryrichards.com
Email – toryrichards60@gmail.com
Good advice…I concur about doing it for passion rather than money.
Yep. I’ll always write, even if I stop publishing my stories. Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts and leaving a comment.