I started writing
in 1990, a group of friends from my
songwriter's workshop wanted to try a writing workshop. We all bought
copies of "Writing Down the Bones" by Natalie Goldberg. Every third
Thursday we'd gather, read a section together and do the
exercises. We'd then read our efforts aloud and everyone would point
out only things they liked. Friendly, supportive, a wonderful
introduction. I discovered
the fun of writing, the absolute "kick" of creating little moments,
tiny worlds that could fit in the 5, 10, and 15 minute exercise times.
The group faded away as one member went climbing in the Ural Mountains,
another's songwriting career took off and she went to LA, another quit
his
doctoring career and took his family around the world for a year. I
kept writing.
In 1996 a friend said she was going to writing conference and wanted me
to come along. Naive person that I was, I didn't even realize there
were such things. A group of us went together for mutual support. Five
days and nights at the 1996 RWA National Conference in Dallas.
RWA
is the
Romance Writers of America. Eight hundred women and seven men showed
up. A little daunting being one of the seven, I can tell you.
But it
was incredible!
I never read a "romance" before that conference. You know, "those
books." By
the end of the following month I'd read a dozen and my bookshelf
started
changing color. The black and white bindings of the "classics" were now
filled in with the dark blue of Laura Kinsale's "Prince of
Midnight," a rainbow of slender category books filled with
dashing men and strong women by authors such as Blake, Wiggs,
and Cameron. Then came the books that changed
my life: the silver, blue, and red of
Nora Roberts' "Born In" trilogy. That a woman's life and
the moment of falling in love could be so captured on the page to enjoy
and to be there to reread
time and again was a revelation.
That was the moment when my dream came back into view. I have
always wanted to touch someone, touch their very heart. This is what I
want to write, stories that feed our soul and remind us of how much we
can be. How much more we are together than apart. My friends call me a
hopeless romantic . . . not at all. I am a hopeful romantic, eternally
hopeful. Mine are stories from my heart to yours. I hope that
my
words offer
even the smallest portion of the gift that so many other authors have
given to me. -Mandy
