What have Writing and the Search for a Man in Common?

Writing to publish is actually like searching for the love of your life. 

When you meet a nice guy you’re supposed to just go with the flow.
This is what you shouldn’t do on your first date:
Do not – under any circumstances think about him as your future husband or the father of your children. Do not imagine how good or bad a lover he might be. Do not mentally orchestrate your wedding.
Live in the moment.
Are you a follower of those rules?

Yeah, me neither ;-)
We (and I’m only talking about me and some women I know) still think about these things behind closed doors. We don’t talk about it anymore. Actually we tell others that we just met a really nice guy but if it doesn’t work out … there are so many moms with handsome sons out there.
(Maybe I have to mention that after some dating nightmare experiences in my single time I’m now happily married with one child… so there is hope).

Well, the same goes with writing. I started to seriously write approx. a year and a half ago. And I made all those freshmen writers’ mistakes. I wrote to get published. I didn’t write for the sake of writing. No, I desperately wanted the fame, the big bucks, to be the new Stephenie Meyers or J.K. Rowling  from Switzerland. 

So I signed up for a writing class (actually for several) and for nine weeks (for each class) I wrote one scene per week - of a story I made up on the go as the class went on. So every scene was in a kind of first draft mode. Still, I expected to get raving feedback. And I wondered how long it will take me to get published. 

S. Meyers wrote Twilight in a few months and after a few years had her book contract.  Each week of this writing class, I was sweating and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Every scene was created with the thought – does this sell; would readers like this? 

The black moment of this story (this is usually when the hero stands between a rock and a hard place) came when I found out that the main theme of my story (it was with angels) was totally hot on the literary market according to Anne Rice – “Angels are the new Vampires”. 

Can you imagine how much pressure I had to deal with?

Suffice to say that the story became very impersonal and a few months later I got completely stuck. 

After almost a nervous breakdown and the increase of gray hair I decided to go on a sabbatical (and yes, I had to start coloring my hair). For you daters and for-the-love-of-your-life searchers, that was the moment when you finally give up. It is said that when you give up and lose total hope, you will finally find the man of your dreams. (How you would attract a man in this depressive state is beyond my imagination, though.)

I guess there is more behind this letting-go philosophy than just giving up the search. In fact, there is an entire emotional process you have to go through first to finally come to the stage of “letting go” and at last finding “the holy grail – your future husband”.

Translation: I realized I needed to write something more personal and should not care if others might like the story or not. If I can write from personal experience, the story will automatically be more intense and engrossing. I already plotted the story and got great feedback. But if the story will be the epitome of the ultimate novel is still open for discussion.
And I’m still dreaming of Oprah sometimes…

To be continued…