Let me tell you something about every writer you admire: they are all like you. They were readers first, and they love reading still. For whatever reason — overabundant creativity, an imagination that insists on exploring worlds, a love for words — some readers turn writer (once we get hooked, it’s a bit like turning zombie, because writing is like a craving for brains, or so I hear.).
Not all of us may stick with writing, not all of us may pursue publication, because the way to getting your words out into the world is paved with rejection, lots and lots of rejection, and writing on requires an incredibly thick skin. And there is nothing wrong with writing fan fic for the love of it or writing down stories just for yourself to enjoy.
When I started out — and I didn’t set out to write romance at all! — I didn’t know what I wanted with my writing, not really, and I didn’t really know the craft of it all that well, or what kind of a writer I was. I learned (and continue to learn) a lot of that as a science fiction and fantasy writer, and those works I publish as Alexandra Seidel. Even when I fell in love with romance as a genre and Alexa Piper was born, I wasn’t yet comfortable as a writer, and it took reading Stephen King’s On Writing for me to figure out that the way I write isn’t what a lot of advice on the subject tells you it should be: I have no plan, no outline, I just sit down in front of the keyboard and let the words come, and that’s okay. Once I realized it’s okay, I discovered anew the joy of writing, the joy of being the first person ever to dive into this story, meet these characters, listen to these conversations, and while it can be exhausting, draining even, I love every bit of it, every sleepless night, every weekend spent inside creating story.
And with any luck, that love translates directly to you, my reader, and I sincerely hope it does. After all, I am a reader just like you, and I know what it is to find a book you love, to fall in love with a world and the characters that populate it, and if I can share that with just one other person, I did at least something right.
So please, if you happen upon a book or a story of mine, let me know if you liked it. Leave a review or get in touch on Facebook or Twitter. After all those people on the way that told me there was something in my fiction that they liked are the reason why I did eventually get my words out into the world where you can find them.
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