Stringing Beads: Musings of a Romance Writer

By Debra K. Maher

Why do writers write? What brings a character to life? Here are thirty-eight heartfelt, cupcake-size essays from the writer of the popular Stringing Beads blog about a romance writer's journey. Homespun incidents from everyday events. Titles include Glamour Girl, A Writer's Valentine, Hylda, and others. Inspiring for writers. Appealing to readers who wonder about the writing process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debra K. Maher
• Release date: Jul 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452435527

Debra K. Maher

Debra K. Maher is a child of the American Midwest. Surrounded by books from an early age, it's only natural that she became both a reader and a writer. She is mother to three unique grown sons and mother-in-law to an amazing daughter-in-law. A few years ago, after her husband and soulmate of 38 years passed away, she retired from her job as an administrative secretary and returned to her home state of Wisconsin. There she spends her free time re-decorating her "new" 1960 Cape Cod, researching genealogy, and exploring the magic world of storytelling. Her work has won many Romance Writer of America Chapter contests. Follow her writer's journey on Stringing Beads at http://debmaher.com, or write her at [e-mail] . (Profile photo by Marti Corn Photography).

Book preview

I'm a writer. I have been most of my life, at least since I learned such a odd creature existed. As I struggled with the discipline needed to write and publish a book, that identification has been both a burden and a joy.

I’ve found a lot of distractions along the way to publication. Family. Illness. Volunteer activities. Day job. Then there was that union I felt compelled to organize and run for six or seven years. Still, as I write this piece I have three full manuscripts finished, a few emerging ones, and a fair number of false-starts. Of course none have sold. I’m still unpublished.

Unvalidated.

Am I afraid to succeed? Some people are, you know. Maybe I'm one of them.

Writer Brenda Ueland’s words, quoted above, bear repeating. Read them again and imagine the scene. I learned, she writes, that you should feel when writing not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

Ueland’s words paint a strong image. One bead. One word, one page, one chapter after another. One submission to an editor followed by another. Given enough time and perseverance, it will happen. I’ll get the call. A new story told, a new book born.

So, I’ve called this collection of essays about my writer’s journey Stringing Beads. I’m hoping, and praying, that it serves as a constant reminder to me of how to write. Patiently, and with unending persistence.

Bead by bead.

Word by word.

And who knows? There’s a strange new revolution sweeping the publishing world today. Authors are at last gaining some modicum of control over their own publication. When it’s apparent I’ve strung enough words, maybe I’ll be the one making the call.

I Hear Voices

For me, my stories all start with a single voice. Soon others chime in. Before I can bring my characters to life, I must hear them speak in my mind.

One of my works-in-progress was conceived at three o’clock on an early winter’s morning. A woman’s thoughts stepped into my dreams and nudged me awake. For a long while I lay there but could not return to sleep. In the dark I kept hearing her sad words call out to me, as if from across time and space.

Finally, I pulled myself away from my husband’s side in our warm bed, arose and stumbled barefoot across the cold floor to my work place in another room. Awash in the artificial blue glow of my computer screen, I began to type.

She’d been dead nearly a year now

The words began to flow as I started writing Clarissa's tale.

A few months after I'd first heard this woman speak to me and began to write her story, I traveled back to my Midwestern hometown to visit family. When I arrived, my brother and his wife were still at work so I went browsing in a nearby antique shop, a store I'd never before visited. As I meandered through the shop's crowded, dusty aisles I happened to glance up. There, hanging on a wall far above, hung a lady's portrait.

Icy tingles skimmed my arms and up my spine. The face in the old framed portrait was Clarissa's, just as I'd first dreamed of her that winter night. I recognized her as surely as I recognized myself each morning in the mirror.

Of course, I had to buy the picture. I paid to box it up and ship it home. The cost of shipping was more than I'd paid for the portrait but it seemed a small price for something so incredibly precious. Clarissa's portrait now rests on top of a dresser in my office. My muse.

Her story was meant to be told.

Through all my edits of that book, her sad, solitary words as she sat in her dusky sewing room, have never changed.

I still hear Clarissa’s voice as soft as funeral satin. Jebediah, her former lover and the father of her missing child, speaks in a warm Virginian's drawl. My villain, Karl, sounds like an untended gravel road, rocky and rough.

Whether my readers will eventually hear my characters as I do doesn’t really matter, as long as they hear them clearly in the voice that speaks to them.

Through their accents, tone, and words, voices give life to the people in our stories. They help shape them, pushing them from the page and into the reader's world.

Do you hear voices, too? How do they sound to you?

What stories do they tell?

Sunnyside

Magic dwells in Tarrytown -- magic, mirth, and a smidgeon of mystery.

On the sunlit banks