Squawk Radio

Oh, man, are you guys going to make me THINK on this blog? Form coherent impressions? Opine? (Actually, I kind of like opining. When I know what I'm talking about. Or have had enough wine that I THINK I know what I'm talking about. Or, better still, have had enough wine that I don't care what I'm talking about. But I digress.) See, this TSTL thing is one of the reasons I stay off the 'Net unless it's to trawl eBay or ABEbooks. Or, now, participate in this blog. Because I want to write my books in as much of a vacuum as I can. If I start worrying about what people think are too much stupidity in my heroines, or too much arrogance in my heroes, or a staggering lack of reality in my plots, or a staggering absence of plot for that matter, I freeze up. I start second-guessing everything, start wondering if I'm going to offend someone by writing a certain thing, and then I run the risk of toning everything down and making everything bland. A brilliant writer friend of mine once said that if people love her work, great. If people loathe her work, great. It's when people think her work is average that she worries. Because she wants to rouse some strong reaction in readers, be it good or bad, and when she gets no reaction at all, she knows she's not writing a strong story. I totally agree.

I can't please everyone. So I try to please myself. And my mom. And, to a lesser degree, my Aunt Dot. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I don't. I just feel like when we start dissecting the stories and the characters, they start to lose some of their magic. I mean, how many books did I read before I was a writer that I could completely immerse myself in, that I could sigh over, that I'd be haunted by for days, that I'd go back and reread and be able to recapture every last spark of that magic? But as a writer, I've gone back and read them, only to find flaws in the story or characters that prick a little chink in the enchantment. Because I THINK too much about them now. I hate that. I want to be a pure reader again. And I want to be a pure writer. Or as pure as I can be. So I can't think about it. (And those who have been in my office can attest to the sign framed in gold sitting atop my desk that says, "JUST DON'T THINK ABOUT IT." So maybe my heroines are TSTL. Maybe some of the heroines I like to read about are TSTL, too. I don't know. I've not read anything on-line or elsewhere that tells me they are. And I hope to keep it that way.

Elizabeth