Surprise! You're not a Historical Writer

When I first starting writing, I wanted to be a historical romance writer. It was my dream to have my name sitting among other well-known historical writers like Mary Hawkins and Brenda Joyce. Then I started to write one. I quickly realized I sucked at them. I didn’t have the patience for the research. My respect for historical writers increased drastically when I saw the amount of research that went into one book. Holy cow. Since I’m not big into history, I know throw the tomatoes, research was a chore not a pleasure. So I accepted that historical writing just wasn’t for me.

What was I going to do now?

In my quest to find the genre where I belonged, I wrote a time travel short story. I felt a little more comfortable here. I could throw in contemporary slang and was freer to write the way I wanted. I liked having a heroine who wasn’t restrained by the expectations of society. One who could toss out a curse word and actually shock the hero because ladies do not speak like that. One who didn’t have sit properly, but could slouch in her chair. So I was getting warmer.

Then I dabbled in paranormal. I enjoyed letting my imagination go. It was fun trying to put a new spin on things. That is where the idea for The Feline Fugitive came from. I got to bring in oddities that would never happen in real life. Very cool. Getting even warmer.

Then I tried fantasy. Again fun, but something was missing.

What could it be?

I’d tried every genre I could think of. I wasn’t even going to attempt Sci-fi. That would be a complete disaster. So what else could I write?

Contemporary.

I actually grimaced. I hadn’t read much of those. And the idea of writing about everyday life didn’t appeal to me. I was more a wanted-to-be-swept-away-to-far-away-lands type girl. But what the hey, right? I tried everything else.

So I started a contemporary, which lead to a full novel. I’m now working on a second contemporary novel. I never in all my years believed I would love to write contemporary. But I do. The contemporary genre is where I’m supposed to be. My writing is the strongest in this genre, and I feel the most comfortable here. So now I have a new dream of being a contemporary author.

I still love my historicals, but I’ll leave the writing to the professionals. I’ll just enjoy a good book from time to time.

So, how about ya’ll, when you first started out were you aiming for a certain genre, only to find you really sucked at it and needed to switch gears?

Esme
www.esmereldabishop.com