Dirty Birds Inspiration

Did you hear?

 

I was over at the Dirty Birdies this Sunday to talk about inspiration.

What a fun group! If you haven't had the opportunity to visit these girls, you need to. Regardless if you are a writer or a reader of erotica, you will find this to be informative and tempting at the same time.

 

 

What inspires you? If you read my post over there, you know that real life inspires me. The chocolate strawberry my husband hands me, the child skipping down the street, the couple arguing at the bistro over steaming cups of coffee.

 

Now it's your turn. Tell me where you find your inspiration!

So let's talk inspiration.

Real Life or Romance?

I used to believe in Fairy Tales. You know - the HEA types. My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn was my heroine of choice. My mom used to warn me that life wasn't like the fairy tales I loved but I never believed her.

Not after my heart was broken from too many boys with winning smiles and dangerous glints in their eyes. Not after my best friend married at age 18 and then divorced a year later. Not even after I experienced rape first hand.

Nothing would shake my belief that HEA is real.

When I met my husband, he proved it to me. My white knight who drove a hard core Mustang. It was love at first sight.

My Fairy Tale come true.

But we all know life gets in the way of love. And that's why we dive into the romance novels. Not for the hard core body action, not for the sighs of delights, the handsome Scots in their kilts, the Tall Dark & Handsome stranger who rescues the damsel in distress. Nope. We read it because of the ups and downs our heroines go through, the conflicts, the stupid choices made throughout the story.

Don't get me wrong. All that other stuff is CRUCIAL to enjoying the story! We need the naked bodies, the titillating heart throbs, the love at first sight. But deep down, I think we like to read a story when someone else's life is WORSE than ours. When the choices THEY make end up making our choices look 'not so bad after all'.

We lose ourselves in these stories because they take us away from our lives. They give us our fairytale when we feel like Cinderella before the ball.

That's my thought at least. What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Why do you read romance novels?

Better yet - why do you write them?

Writing for the Market?

This past weekend on Twitter I tossed around a phrase I heard about on a few blogs.

"Write for the Market".

I don't know about you, but writing for the market doesn't generally work. Or does it?

what if you were to take what I said about and use the following formula: Write one project for the market and one project for yourself.

Does that make a difference?

I have two thoughts. I haven't quite drank my pot of coffee yet, and I'm chocolate free for the morning, so my thoughts might be a bit scattered, but ....

This works if you are writing short stories or novellas for epublishers. But for novels? Writing about something your not passionate about, or something totally away from your genre just because it's hot - doesn't sound like a winning formula to me.

This also works if what is hot is something you enjoy writing about. If I'm a contemporary romance writer and the market is screaming for sci-fi, well ... no amount of chocolate is gonna help me then.

I'm curious. What do you think? Since this works mainly for novellas and short stories - do you use this formula? Write for the market and for yourself? You make money with your backlist, or so they say. If your backlist includes what's hot right now, then fantastic. If it doesn't - will it make a difference?