Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Back to My Roots

Last night I pulled out an old WIP that I had started a year or so back. It's a medieval that I pushed to the side when I read my first Brockmann and became obsessed with military romance, convinced that's the true subgenre of my heart.

Except, know what? Reading through my bits and pieces of the medieval, I fell in love with it all over again. Really. The enthusiasm for that story came rushing in at me like a kid in a candy store. I remembered all of my ideas for different scenes, what the characters' backstories are, how they fall in love and what obstacles stand in their way. For the first time in a very long time, my heart is pounding over the idea of working on it. As much as I'm excited about the mil roms, this book seems almost easy because I don't have to force any of it out.

It's not without problems. The plot is fairly straight forward and certainly nothing that has never been done before. Granted, I haven't relied on as many romance novel cliches as I did in my very first manuscript, but there are quite a few of my favs. Too, it's a medieval set in England. I understand that this subgenre is on the decline, readers such as Wendy Crutcher (aka, Super Librarian) indicating they are more than a little ready for the industry to move away from English set historicals. Honestly, I don't think this book will turn around the trend with it's dazzling new approach to castle epics.

But I don't care. I'm excited about this. I think it's a good story. Even better, it's a story with a healthy start that can be finished with some solid effort.

And at this point, that's what I need. I need to type The End and mean it. I need to print out a completed first draft for editing. I need something to keep me going.

Most of all, I'm excited again. Yay!

1 comment:

MJFredrick said...

YAY, Lynn! That's a great feeling!