Almost everyone has an idea that calls to them, invades their sleep in recurring dreams and tantalizes their imagination, daring them to harness it and set it all down on paper. Ideas are never the problem for fiction writers. Crafting the germ of a story into a compelling 400 pages is another thing altogether.

     Writing is both an art and a craft. While art is the province of genius, a craft may be learned and honed to such a fine point, it can make the most ordinary premise into a blockbuster bestseller that touches millions.

     So how do you master the craft of writing romantic fiction?

     Become a student of the genre.

     When you read a novel, take notes. Study how your favorite authors create memorable characters. Are there some key ingredients common to all great heroes and heroines? How can you incorporate those traits in your characters?

     Create a plot outline, identifying the major twists. Do you see similar patterns, a certain rise and fall in tension, from one book to the next?

      Read books about writing novels. There are as many ways to write as there are writers, but you'll save yourself some time if you survey the lay of the land while standing on the shoulders of others. The reading list on my Write Stuff page is by no means exhaustive, but it's a good place to start.

     Attend writing conferences and workshops. A couple of universities have MFAs with emphasis on fiction if you're the scholarly type. There are myriads of online classes if you need a nudge getting started.

     Even though you're not under a deadline, if you intend on a writing career, set a deadline for yourself. Until you are under contract, how much time you take is entirely up to you. Tolkien took decades to write his Ring trilogy, but his goal was to create a fictional world to match the imaginary languages he'd created. If you want to build a career in romance, you'll probably want to step that up a bit. In the current publishing climate, writers are expected to be both good and prolific. Set daily, weekly and monthly page goals and allow plenty of time at either end for research and polishing.

     Finding time to write if you're employed elsewhere is always a challenge. I used to work a 40 hour a week, 8-5 job as a banker. (My husband said I enslaved people to debt by day and lust by night!) Even so, I managed a 100 page a month output by following this schedule: Monday-Friday=2 pages a day, Saturday=10 pages, Sunday=5 pages. I primed the pump by jotting down a paragraph before work and running scenes through my mind during lunch so I wouldn't have to face a blank screen each evening. My DH did laundry and cleaned the house, so I could really crank out the pages on weekends. He's a real hero!

     You can read about it all day, but the best way to learn to write is . . . to write. So fire up the laptop and tear it up. This is definitely an "on the job" type of apprenticeship. Time to burn some hard drive space.

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"Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential."

~ Jessamyn West