Sierra Donovan's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
Fact vs. Fiction
"Oh! So THAT's how you two met!"
When I told people that my first novel was a romance set at a radio station, I got that reaction a lot. Yes, my husband is a disc jockey; yes, we did work at the same radio station together for seven years. But that happened after we were married.
I borrow from my life. I freely admit it. My stories are filled with first and last names borrowed from family members and friends. The afghan my aunt crocheted for me is in the first chapter of "Love on the Air." And that radio station is filled with small items and incidents from the station where I worked. We really did have a CD player we had to stick a butter knife into to rescue a disc that got stuck. And a break room where there was always danger of coming around the corner and crashing into someone (a perfect accident for my hero and heroine!).
My next book, "No Christmas Like the Present," is liberally sprinkled with favorite Christmas carols, holiday movie references and names of family members. (My heroine is trying to finish her Christmas cards, so borrowing names of aunts and cousins was a natural.) There's even an appearance by a cherished, tacky tree ornament I had as a child. But a magical visitor straight out of "A Christmas Carol" didn't REALLY appear at my door.
I plant pieces of myself into my stories, and I love it.
But if people were to assume that everything in my books really happened to me ... brrr! That could open a can of worms. If my next hero were an auto mechanic, what if people started thinking I had eyes for the guy who fixes my car? Come to think of it, we have been seeing a lot more of each other lately, as my car gets older.... See? Instant gossip!
I wonder if people who write murder mysteries run into the same reaction. Do people realize it's fiction, since there are no bodies turning up on the author's doorstep? Or do friends start eying them uneasily, wondering if a character who resembles them might turn up as a victim in the next book?
Of course, no one ever said writing fiction was for the faint of heart.
The beauty of writing, as with reading, is that we get to escape into another world and experience it vicariously. Writing can have a tremendous advantage because we control this universe. On the other hand, sometimes it sends us down blind alleys or requires us to cause pain for those characters we love so much.
When I'm doing my job right, I experience the story every bit as much as my readers do. There's great joy in taking just a pinch of my favorite things, a dash of personal experience, and stirring it into a great big bowl of fantasy.
So, if any of you notice a good-looking grocery checker in my next book, why, pay it no mind.
When I told people that my first novel was a romance set at a radio station, I got that reaction a lot. Yes, my husband is a disc jockey; yes, we did work at the same radio station together for seven years. But that happened after we were married.
I borrow from my life. I freely admit it. My stories are filled with first and last names borrowed from family members and friends. The afghan my aunt crocheted for me is in the first chapter of "Love on the Air." And that radio station is filled with small items and incidents from the station where I worked. We really did have a CD player we had to stick a butter knife into to rescue a disc that got stuck. And a break room where there was always danger of coming around the corner and crashing into someone (a perfect accident for my hero and heroine!).
My next book, "No Christmas Like the Present," is liberally sprinkled with favorite Christmas carols, holiday movie references and names of family members. (My heroine is trying to finish her Christmas cards, so borrowing names of aunts and cousins was a natural.) There's even an appearance by a cherished, tacky tree ornament I had as a child. But a magical visitor straight out of "A Christmas Carol" didn't REALLY appear at my door.
I plant pieces of myself into my stories, and I love it.
But if people were to assume that everything in my books really happened to me ... brrr! That could open a can of worms. If my next hero were an auto mechanic, what if people started thinking I had eyes for the guy who fixes my car? Come to think of it, we have been seeing a lot more of each other lately, as my car gets older.... See? Instant gossip!
I wonder if people who write murder mysteries run into the same reaction. Do people realize it's fiction, since there are no bodies turning up on the author's doorstep? Or do friends start eying them uneasily, wondering if a character who resembles them might turn up as a victim in the next book?
Of course, no one ever said writing fiction was for the faint of heart.
The beauty of writing, as with reading, is that we get to escape into another world and experience it vicariously. Writing can have a tremendous advantage because we control this universe. On the other hand, sometimes it sends us down blind alleys or requires us to cause pain for those characters we love so much.
When I'm doing my job right, I experience the story every bit as much as my readers do. There's great joy in taking just a pinch of my favorite things, a dash of personal experience, and stirring it into a great big bowl of fantasy.
So, if any of you notice a good-looking grocery checker in my next book, why, pay it no mind.
Love: The Prime Motivator
“Oh, I don’t care much for romance.”
Those are words that romance writers – and readers – often hear. The funny thing is, it’s hard to find a good story without it.
Last night my husband and I watched a classic ghost story, “The Uninvited.” A man and his sister move into a haunted house. Sort of an unusual domestic arrangement. Why are they brother and sister? So the brother is able to become romantically involved with Stella, the young woman who’s the target of the spirits in the house.
Why is that? Because storytellers recognize that most of us are driven by the need for romantic love. A story may not be billed as a “romance,” but you’ll find romance at the heart of most stories.
Think of the classics, and you’ll find that the desire for romantic love is usually a prime motivator for the characters, even if that pursuit is misguided. In “The Great Gatsby,” the title character builds a new life for, and is finally destroyed by, the pursuit of love. In “Casablanca,” the story hinges on the lost love between Rick and Ilsa. “Gone with the Wind” without the passion of Scarlett and Rhett? I don’t think so.
What about action films? Let’s talk “Spiderman.” In the 2002 film, Peter Parker tells us in the opening narration: “Let me assure you, this, like any story worth telling, is all about a girl.” How about film noir? The leading man in “Double Indemnity” may be motivated by lust rather than love … but he’s built it up into something pretty important by the time he’s willing to kill a guy for it. In horror, the mummy is after his lost mate, and all the Frankenstein monster really wants is a bride. Comedy? Even in something as light, silly and just-for-fun as the “Anchorman” films, Ron Burgundy’s gotta get the girl (or get her back).
Love – the need for it or the lack of it – makes everything more important. It raises the stakes. It’s something we all want. Storytellers, readers and moviegoers are instinctively drawn to it, whether they realize it or not.
Most romance readers and writers simply recognize that need more consciously, so we go after it more directly. Someone may be getting killed, something may be getting stolen, a career may be at stake … but whatever our characters think they’re after, we can be darned sure there’s a happily-ever-after at the end of it.
And that’s a story worth telling.
Those are words that romance writers – and readers – often hear. The funny thing is, it’s hard to find a good story without it.
Last night my husband and I watched a classic ghost story, “The Uninvited.” A man and his sister move into a haunted house. Sort of an unusual domestic arrangement. Why are they brother and sister? So the brother is able to become romantically involved with Stella, the young woman who’s the target of the spirits in the house.
Why is that? Because storytellers recognize that most of us are driven by the need for romantic love. A story may not be billed as a “romance,” but you’ll find romance at the heart of most stories.
Think of the classics, and you’ll find that the desire for romantic love is usually a prime motivator for the characters, even if that pursuit is misguided. In “The Great Gatsby,” the title character builds a new life for, and is finally destroyed by, the pursuit of love. In “Casablanca,” the story hinges on the lost love between Rick and Ilsa. “Gone with the Wind” without the passion of Scarlett and Rhett? I don’t think so.
What about action films? Let’s talk “Spiderman.” In the 2002 film, Peter Parker tells us in the opening narration: “Let me assure you, this, like any story worth telling, is all about a girl.” How about film noir? The leading man in “Double Indemnity” may be motivated by lust rather than love … but he’s built it up into something pretty important by the time he’s willing to kill a guy for it. In horror, the mummy is after his lost mate, and all the Frankenstein monster really wants is a bride. Comedy? Even in something as light, silly and just-for-fun as the “Anchorman” films, Ron Burgundy’s gotta get the girl (or get her back).
Love – the need for it or the lack of it – makes everything more important. It raises the stakes. It’s something we all want. Storytellers, readers and moviegoers are instinctively drawn to it, whether they realize it or not.
Most romance readers and writers simply recognize that need more consciously, so we go after it more directly. Someone may be getting killed, something may be getting stolen, a career may be at stake … but whatever our characters think they’re after, we can be darned sure there’s a happily-ever-after at the end of it.
And that’s a story worth telling.
Birth of a Series
Once upon a time, I didn't plan on writing a series.
Then I wrote a book set in the fictional Southern California mountain town of Tall Pine. A funny thing happened. Secondary characters, who have always been fun for me to write, started tapping me on the shoulder. They hinted – insisted, in fact – that they wanted stories of their own.
As I started to imagine the right romantic matches for these characters, I started seeing characters with a new sense of depth, thinking of the differences that make them unique. Hero B might like the woman Hero A fell for in Book 1, but he definitely needed a different type of woman to fall in love with. As a matter of fact, Hero A and Hero B were such different people, they didn’t even like each other much.
And those two people, over there … what if they were exes?
And so the Evergreen Lane series was born.
Before I finished writing Book 1, Do You Believe in Santa?, the town of Tall Pine was already populating itself with characters I knew I wanted to spend more time with. Not just romantic leads, but the folks who ran the local businesses, argued with my hero at town council meetings, or poured coffee at the little café on Evergreen Lane.
By the time I finished revisions on Book 1, at a point when I’m usually ready for a breather, I was scribbling down scenes for the next book. And the one after that.
Planning these stories has been fun and exciting for me. It’s made me think, more than ever, about the backgrounds and experiences that make us all different. And it’s got me sketching out local landmarks, so I don’t have a character turning a corner the wrong direction and walking right into the pond I put there in Book 1. I’m hoping readers will find a new home in my little town right along with me.
So, if you’ve read Do You Believe in Santa?, come back with me to Evergreen Lane, the main street that runs through the town of Tall Pine. In Book 2, We Need A Little Christmas, you'll see a lot of the characters you met in Book 1, including Scotty Leroux, who just insisted on being my next hero.
And if you don’t start with Book 1, don’t worry. It’s easy to find your way around Tall Pine, and I promise you won’t get lost.
Then I wrote a book set in the fictional Southern California mountain town of Tall Pine. A funny thing happened. Secondary characters, who have always been fun for me to write, started tapping me on the shoulder. They hinted – insisted, in fact – that they wanted stories of their own.
As I started to imagine the right romantic matches for these characters, I started seeing characters with a new sense of depth, thinking of the differences that make them unique. Hero B might like the woman Hero A fell for in Book 1, but he definitely needed a different type of woman to fall in love with. As a matter of fact, Hero A and Hero B were such different people, they didn’t even like each other much.
And those two people, over there … what if they were exes?
And so the Evergreen Lane series was born.
Before I finished writing Book 1, Do You Believe in Santa?, the town of Tall Pine was already populating itself with characters I knew I wanted to spend more time with. Not just romantic leads, but the folks who ran the local businesses, argued with my hero at town council meetings, or poured coffee at the little café on Evergreen Lane.
By the time I finished revisions on Book 1, at a point when I’m usually ready for a breather, I was scribbling down scenes for the next book. And the one after that.
Planning these stories has been fun and exciting for me. It’s made me think, more than ever, about the backgrounds and experiences that make us all different. And it’s got me sketching out local landmarks, so I don’t have a character turning a corner the wrong direction and walking right into the pond I put there in Book 1. I’m hoping readers will find a new home in my little town right along with me.
So, if you’ve read Do You Believe in Santa?, come back with me to Evergreen Lane, the main street that runs through the town of Tall Pine. In Book 2, We Need A Little Christmas, you'll see a lot of the characters you met in Book 1, including Scotty Leroux, who just insisted on being my next hero.
And if you don’t start with Book 1, don’t worry. It’s easy to find your way around Tall Pine, and I promise you won’t get lost.
The Magic of Christmas Trees
I love Christmas trees.
Not just the family tree we decorate at home every year (we still buy fresh ones). And not just the second, artificial tree we got about ten years ago (partly to hold our ridiculous overflow of ornaments). I also love light sculptures of Christmas trees, Christmas tree earrings, books stacked in the shape of a Christmas tree … you get the idea.
And because I’m a geek when it comes to things I love, I did some homework. I learned that the tradition of Christmas trees goes back to 16th century Germany. (Makes sense, because I’m half German … it’s in my blood!) It’s believed that Martin Luther may have been the first to put lights on a Christmas tree, in the form of candles, to recreate the effect of stars shining through the branches of tall evergreen trees he saw walking home on a winter night. German soldiers introduced the trees to Canada in the late 1700s, while German immigrants brought them to the United States at around the same time. In England, Christmas trees were popularized by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in the 1840s.
Most of the earlier trees were planted in pots and decorated with edible items—candy, nuts, cookies. The first artificial Christmas trees, introduced in Germany in the late 1700s, were made of goose feathers. Trees made from brush bristles were introduced by a British manufacturer in the 1930s (and, sorry ‘bout this, they were made from the same bristles used for toilet brushes).
Then, from Chicago in the late 1950s, came my pride and joy: the silver aluminum Christmas tree.
Looking back on them, most people shake their heads. What were we thinking? A tinsel tree, designed to reflect the light cast by a bulb with a rotating color wheel in front of it, so the tree changed from red to blue to orange to green. What could be more kitschy? But remember, this was the middle of the twentieth century, when “modern” was in.
And if you were a kid and didn’t know any better, it was magic. As children we love bright, shiny things with lots of color, and “tacky” isn’t in our vocabulary. If you haven’t guessed, we had one of those silver trees when I was growing up. I remember sitting in front of it by the hour, watching the colors as I counted down the days to Christmas. That memory, and one of those trees, made it into my latest book, “We Need a Little Christmas.”
That artificial tree of ours? Yep, it’s a silver one, not quite like the pompom-style trees of the ’50s and ’60s. My husband picked it up for me at WalMart several years ago. And while the light projector it came with isn’t quite like the color wheel I had as a kid, something inside me lit up the first time I saw the colors shining on the tree.
It told me that we don’t always have to grow up all the way. While I can step outside and see the cheesiness, I can still look at a shiny tree and feel the magic I felt as a kid. After all, what’s wrong with soft lights and pretty colors?
Mind you, I love the “real” thing, too, like a lit-up, decorated twenty-foot tree in a park or a town square. Or the whimsy of Charlie Brown’s droopy little tree … the one that was just waiting for a little love.
Maybe there’s just something about the symbol of the Christmas tree. It’s where we gather—or sometimes gaze alone—to capture the spirit of this special time of year. Does a Christmas tree do that for you? Or is there another symbol that captures the magic of the season for you?
Not just the family tree we decorate at home every year (we still buy fresh ones). And not just the second, artificial tree we got about ten years ago (partly to hold our ridiculous overflow of ornaments). I also love light sculptures of Christmas trees, Christmas tree earrings, books stacked in the shape of a Christmas tree … you get the idea.
And because I’m a geek when it comes to things I love, I did some homework. I learned that the tradition of Christmas trees goes back to 16th century Germany. (Makes sense, because I’m half German … it’s in my blood!) It’s believed that Martin Luther may have been the first to put lights on a Christmas tree, in the form of candles, to recreate the effect of stars shining through the branches of tall evergreen trees he saw walking home on a winter night. German soldiers introduced the trees to Canada in the late 1700s, while German immigrants brought them to the United States at around the same time. In England, Christmas trees were popularized by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in the 1840s.
Most of the earlier trees were planted in pots and decorated with edible items—candy, nuts, cookies. The first artificial Christmas trees, introduced in Germany in the late 1700s, were made of goose feathers. Trees made from brush bristles were introduced by a British manufacturer in the 1930s (and, sorry ‘bout this, they were made from the same bristles used for toilet brushes).
Then, from Chicago in the late 1950s, came my pride and joy: the silver aluminum Christmas tree.
Looking back on them, most people shake their heads. What were we thinking? A tinsel tree, designed to reflect the light cast by a bulb with a rotating color wheel in front of it, so the tree changed from red to blue to orange to green. What could be more kitschy? But remember, this was the middle of the twentieth century, when “modern” was in.
And if you were a kid and didn’t know any better, it was magic. As children we love bright, shiny things with lots of color, and “tacky” isn’t in our vocabulary. If you haven’t guessed, we had one of those silver trees when I was growing up. I remember sitting in front of it by the hour, watching the colors as I counted down the days to Christmas. That memory, and one of those trees, made it into my latest book, “We Need a Little Christmas.”
That artificial tree of ours? Yep, it’s a silver one, not quite like the pompom-style trees of the ’50s and ’60s. My husband picked it up for me at WalMart several years ago. And while the light projector it came with isn’t quite like the color wheel I had as a kid, something inside me lit up the first time I saw the colors shining on the tree.
It told me that we don’t always have to grow up all the way. While I can step outside and see the cheesiness, I can still look at a shiny tree and feel the magic I felt as a kid. After all, what’s wrong with soft lights and pretty colors?
Mind you, I love the “real” thing, too, like a lit-up, decorated twenty-foot tree in a park or a town square. Or the whimsy of Charlie Brown’s droopy little tree … the one that was just waiting for a little love.
Maybe there’s just something about the symbol of the Christmas tree. It’s where we gather—or sometimes gaze alone—to capture the spirit of this special time of year. Does a Christmas tree do that for you? Or is there another symbol that captures the magic of the season for you?
