Let’s start at the very beginning,
A very good place to start,
When we read we begin with ABC,
When we write we begin with ???
(with my apologies to Julie Andrews and Rodgers and Hammerstein)
When we talk about what we love, we begin with the women’s fiction books that got us started writing.
For me? I can still remember reading Alice Hoffman’s Turtle Moon. It blew me away, still does. It’s one of those books that I re-read every single year and I still get shivers when I read about the teenage boy trapped in the tree beside the drive-in and the man who blames himself for that boy’s death.
Alice Hoffman’s Turtle Moon is the book that took me past the joy of reading women’s fiction to the place where I wanted, more than anything, to write a book like that.
What about you? What book convinced you to start writing?
Kate
I loved Turtle Moon, Kate!
I don’t think there was one book that got me writing. I always wanted to write, but one day I took a hard look at my life and realized if I wanted it, the simple solution was to actually do it. Not just think about doing it, or half-heartedly tinker at it.
It sounds a little farfetched, even to me, but I think Louisa May Alcott’s responsible. I’ve always written romance because I loved HEAs, but from LITTLE WOMEN right through her other novels, Miss Alcott (not to mention Jane Austen before her) let her women be strong and smart–long before it was acceptable to do so.
Michelle, I think you’re absolutely right – you just have to do it. I often think of the Nike commercial -just do it. But this book is what got me thinking about doing it…
Kate
Loved Turtle Moon,too!
Actually, I started writing at seven because the bookmobile only let me check out 10 books a week and I ran out of new stories to read. (Also, my grandfather, with whom I lived, was an Irish seanachie and my mother was an actress and playwright, so storytelling was a natural family tradition.)
The first novella I wrote in the second grade was about two starcrossed mallards. (I’d just learned they mated for life.) A hunter shot the mother duck, leaving the grieving drake to take care of the ducklings. She did not go slowly. It took her several chapters to fly off to that giant wetlands in the sky. Years later it dawned on me that people hunt in the fall and ducklings are born in the spring, but timelines have never been my strength.
Having no shame, I reused that plot device of a secondary character slowly dying all through The Return of Caine O’Halloran (Temptation) and Fair Haven (Pocket Women’s Fiction/romance.)
It wasn’t one single for me either, but I do remember being strongly affected by Sue Miller’s While I Was Gone, Anita Shreve’s The Last Time They Met, and Elizabeth Berg’s Never Change. These were amazingly well written novels, in my opinion, and I appreciated the relationship themes they explored. I read a number of books by Jennifer Crusie and Susan Elizabeth Phillips that same summer, and I was just blown away by how diverse and wonderful romantic women’s fiction could be… I wanted to be a part of it, too.
Liz, funny, I love both Alcott and Austen (re-read Austen every summer) but I didn’t think about actually writing – I obviously came to it late compared to JoAnn – until I read Turtle Moon. I didn’t think about being a writer as a kid, in fact, I’m pretty sure I didn’t think about it until a professor at university (and I went there late as well – I didn’t get there until I was 30) suggested I might try a short story course.
JoAnn – I love the dying mallard. That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard and who cares about timelines anyway?
Marilyn – I’m teaching a short story course right now and I can’t tell you how many times I tell my students to look at romance writers and how lucky we are and how diverse we are. In a single week, romance books or stories or novellas come out that deal with every single thing under the sun (and lots that aren’t – like vampires:) -
Liz, I’m right there with you. Louisa May Alcott’s LITTLE WOMEN is to blame for turning me on to Women’s Fiction. And I love how you put it: Miss Alcott’s women … were strong and smart–long before it was acceptable to do so.
I also absolutely love Elizabeth Berg; Jodi Picoult’s works will make me cry, every time.
P.S. Speaking of strong and smart women, my favorite WF book: THE FROG PRINCE, by Jane Porter.
-Kathleen
There were 3 books I read about the same time that were similar in style and may not qualify as WF because 2 of them were written by men: “The Notebook,” “Bridges of Madison County,” and “The Gazebo.” I’d always wanted to write and had told myself that some day, when I was no longer working full-time, I’d do it. I had a window of opportunity in-between technical writing contracts and I took the plunge, hoping I could write a book like one of these. I’m still working on that.
I’ve been reading and writing romance since elementary school, so I don’t think I can cue in on any one book to blame for my sins. I read the Alcott and Austen books. I read cereal boxes. I wrote haunted house books in 4th grade and tragic teenage romance in 7th. Read Zane Grey and Agatha Christie. Trixie Belden and Cherry Ames. Let’s just blame in on Anna Karenina….
The first women’s fiction novel that struck me as being the ideal blend of angsty wf with romantic elements was The Second Coming of Lucy Hatch by Marsha Moyer. Such a great book.
Although I was big on Ann Tyler at that time the book that sent me to the keyboard only by a stretch could be called women’s fiction. I was in the hospital recovering from breast cancer surgery when my brother sent me a paperback of Larry McMurtry’s first novel after the Lonesome Dove series, Texasville. Laughing so hard my stitches near popped, I instantly decided that the Maryland and New York characters I worked with in the small market radio business were even funnier than McMurtry’s fictional ones. They HAD TO BE satirized. Maybe if I hadn’t just come to the realization that a chance existed that I wouldn’t live forever, I would have thought my decision through. Even before I finished reading the book that started me writing I got to work on my first novel, DRIVETIME.
Count me in as a Louisa May Alcott fan; in fact it was Jo who convinced me I could actually be a writer when I grew up.
Then, Pat, I think it’s so ironic you mentioned Anna Karenina. That was the book that, although I read it every year for ages (I always find something new), had me quit writing fiction for about three years. Because I knew I could never top it.
Then I finally realized that the world had already had a Tolstoy; they didn’t need another one. And went back to writing and sold that year.
It’s probably because of my lit major background, but when I used to think of women’s fiction, I’d think of Kate Chopin, Marilyn French, and Virginia Woolf, since they dealt with women’s issues. I also adored the Bronte’s. (My honor’s thesis was The Brontes as Feminists.) Then I discovered Mary McCarthy’s The Group and became a more commercial women’s fiction reader which led me to Alice Hoffman,Ann Tyler, and Toni Morrison. I actually can occasionally feel drunk when I read Morrison because of the richness of her prose.
Oh, and Maeve Binchey! Since I grew up in an Irish family, I was beyond thrilled when a reader sent me a photo of one of my Irish WF books in a dump with Binchey’s at the Shannon airport duty free shop. Though I did keep thinking of some American impulsively buying my book as a last souvenir of Ireland, then reading the bio on the plane back home and saying, “She’s from Arizona???” LOL
Nancy Drew when I was a child. I read them all. Then it was Victoria Holt, Phyllis Whitney, etc. I still love The Devil on Horseback. Then it was Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove. Oh, and somewhere in there was Gone with the Wind, Sweet’s Folly,and so many more. If there’s no book available, I’ll read the cereal box.
Hi Kate,
Although I had wanted to write most of my life, something always seemed to get in the way. Finally, I started writing to fill in the long hours of convalescence about twenty years ago. I haven’t stopped since. I write for Harlequin Super Romance, with my next one out in August 2010.
I’m writing a book that is women’s fiction, titled Clouds Across the Sun. It’s going to be a LONG session as the story has some pretty difficult life issues to deal with, but I love it.
I also have a story called Nursing Sisters which is another women’s fiction book based on my experience as a nurse.
Stella