A Writer's Thanksgiving
As romance authors, it often seems like we've got an uphill climb in our chosen profession. For the unpublished, we face long turnarounds as we wait for editors to get back to us. For pubs, the terrors of the midlist trap, the numbers game of sell-throughs and advances, the envy as we watch authors (whose writing we don't even like) get full color ads and book tours while one of our editors quits an we are promptly orphaned. It's frustrating, maddening, heartbreaking. So I thought I'd take this column to shine the light on the positive side of what we do.

1. You get to fall in love every single day. We are in the business of happy endings. Sure, conflicts happen, bad things happen -- but you know, with complete certainty, that everything's going to work out.

2. You get to live larger than life. No matter what kind of story you're writing, your characters are not spending each page getting milk, sweeping the floor, paying bills. They're doing things that most people only dream about -- including #1, falling in love with someone perfect for them. And when you're writing, you're living their lives and their experiences. You can spend the day parasailing off the Great Barrier Reef, or stealing the Hope diamond. The minute you sit down to your keyboard, you get to live a dream.

3. You're doing something most people only dream about. The minute you say to someone else that you're a writer, you're asserting the fact that you're courageous, creative, and just a touch crazed -- in a good way. Something like 80% of Americans believe that they're going to write a book someday. You're one of the few that's actually doing it now. And no matter how snarky a detractor can be, his or her negative attitude is usually a big order of envy with a side of ignorance. You're a writer, an artist, a professional dreamer. You've got the fire. Criticism isn't going to stop you. That's why people envy you!

4. You get to change lives. Every book has something to say -- a message, a way of reaching out to people. Don't be fooled by the labels of froth, escapism, or beach read. Say a reader comes home after a brutal day at the office to find her husband locked in the garage and both kids in bed with chicken pox. If, after reading your book, she can go from stressed out and miserable to happy, then you've just changed her life. If your book is about hope, and she finds some, you've spread a message. If the only take-away from your slim manuscript is "love wins"… I can think of world leaders and religious figures that say something amazingly similar. (And trust me -- the Dalai Lama rarely gets slapped with the label of frothy sentimentalist.) If you're not published yet, I can guarantee that at any stage of your career, the book you write is your subconscious trying to tell you something. The most important life you change will be your own, on every single project you work on.

5. You get to write. Doesn't that sound simple? Sure, it doesn't sound like a blessing when your characters don't listen to you, and the blank page seems to be bludgeoning you with internal criticism. But how much worse would it be if you never got to write at all? If the stories remained trapped in your head, simply because you were convinced that writing was silly, or stupid, or financially unsound? How crazy do you think you'd be if you denied yourself something this important? Instead, you've found something that's uniquely you. Something that makes you feel special. Something that you love to do, even when it's hard. It's a calling, and a rough one, but there are millions of people out there who don't have it, and want it. If it were the only thing on this list, it'd be the most important

First published in the April 2003 issue of the Heart of the Bay newsletter for the San Francisco Area chapter of the RWA. Check out their website at www.sfarwa.com for more information.

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