Every writer — and potential writer — has them: manuscripts that were inspired, that had a great story, that were begun with enthusiasm… then fizzled out. We write ten pages, twenty, even a hundred, then all are shunted into a back drawer and forgotten (more or less).
Twenty-five years ago, I was visiting my friends Catherine and Hervé in Murcia, Spain. I had a lovely room with a long window looking out onto a broad beige plain; along one wall was a huge old wooden writing desk; and I had hours of free time because my host and hostess worked for most of the day. This, I decided, was the right time to begin working on a new novel. My first romance, Felicity’s Power, had just been published in Australia, and I was enthusiastic about writing another for the same (now defunct) publisher.
The theme was one I had been thinking about for many years; I had the beginning; I had the end; I had the hero — David; the heroine — Patty Jo; I had whole chunks of the story in my head. What could stop me? On that first day, I worked all morning, then went out for a lovely lunch of tapas at a local bar and an afternoon of walking.
That evening at the dinner table, Hervé asked about my romance. What was it about? I told him, and he looked surprised.
“That’s no romance. A romance should be light-hearted, hopeful.”
“But…” Then I shut up. He was right, wasn’t he? I was a mere novice, but even I knew that Patty Jo’s story might never fit into the romance category. Or would it?
Over the next few days, I fooled around with what I had written, trying to see what I could do with it. Then, my holiday came to an end. The first pages of Patty Jo remained first pages, tucked into a corner of my computer.
The years passed; beloved computers died; files were lost; other books were written; but the pages of Patty Jo lingered in one of the very many unloved folders. And on one idle day, some five or six years ago, I looked at the pages again.
No, Patty Jo wasn’t strictly a romance, but it would still make a good story. Why start with a category in mind? Why bash something into a shape it wasn’t meant to have? Why end up frustrated?
So, Words for Patty Jo began taking shape. Yes, it needed an awfully long time to come to fruition—I was doing research in Eastern and Central Europe; I published other romances and non-fiction books; and I wasn’t certain that what I had written was any good. I wanted beautiful, singing phrases, images that would titillate, and heart-clutching incidents. Believe me, I can’t, for the life of me, count how many revisions the manuscript has gone through, how many words were changed until the perfect one glowed in the right place.
But here it is, finally. And I love it. It’s my beautiful baby, the cover by Teddi Black is glorious, and I’ll get the ARC from the Wild Rose Press in a few weeks.
No, it’s not totally a romance, not totally women’s fiction, not totally literary… What is it? I’ll let someone else decide.
Jill (J. Arlene) Culiner
https://www.j-arleneculiner.com
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