The reader questions were ALL awesome! I'll pick another one later this month, because I had such a hard time choosing!!

1) Who were your early influences, the writers that helped shape you?

3) How do you get your story ideas?

Goddessani, these were all really great questions, which was why I picked them (and they happen to be the ones I get asked most often!). I’ll take the last one first. Story ideas are everywhere for me. I don’t have a problem coming up with ideas, and it seems the more I write, the more ideas I can come up with. When I first started writing, I struggled a little more to come up with saleable ideas, but now, 28 books later, it’s easier to find those, as if my brain is better able to pluck the pieces of a good story out of the things I see around me.

Now, back to the first two questions. Early writers--there were so many. I have always read voraciously and widely. Seriously, I would read a cereal box if you put it in front of me. I read everything I see that has words on it. If I have any time to kill at all, I want to have a book or magazine with me. I remember starting with Judy Blume and Marguerite Henry and Beverly Cleary, then graduating to Stephen King, Robert Parker, LaVyrle Spencer, Nora Roberts, so many authors. I could literally list pages of authors I have read and loved. Every one of them impacted me, left me with a desire to learn to write like that.

When I was younger, I used to take the stories I read and rewrite them, with new endings. A little nine-year-old plagiarism, LOL, but when I got older, I learned to write my own stories. I realized at a very early age (probably from the minute I could pick up a pencil) that I wanted to be a writer.

But getting from wanting to be to actually being an author was a much more difficult journey. I made my career as a freelancer without a lot of bumps in the road (sold my first story at eleven, got a job as a stringer at twelve…that’s a story for another day) but the author thing kept eluding me. I wrote piece after piece (poems, short stories, etc.), eventually graduating up to books.

I wrote book after book--ten in all--but was rejected over and over again. Learning to write fiction was really difficult for me. And support…

Well, let’s just say that my husband is a wonderful man, but when he saw me getting my heart broken by rejection after rejection, he wanted me to quit writing fiction. Not because he didn’t support me, exactly, but because he didn’t want to see me hurt. I had few writer friends who understood what I was going through, so finding people who were supportive was sometimes tough. I have a really good critique partner, however, who was really supportive and she has been a great rock for years. And when it mattered, my husband was there, and helped me pick myself up and keep going.

Me and Janet Dean, my critique partner: At the RWA conference in Dallas, July 2007

One thing about publishing--this is a business that is up and down all the time. It’s a business that can easily beat up your self esteem because the editors, the reviewers, the readers (sometimes) will attack the words that you created, the novel that you poured your heart and soul into. Your sales can tank…a million different things can happen that can hurt you emotionally. One thing you have to remember is that your strongest source of support has to come from within.

I believe that about anything. My daughter is doing cross-country this season. I won’t be there at mile three to encourage her. I can support her before the race by buying good running shoes, filling her with healthy meals, telling her how much I believe in her (and driving her to all those practices!), but when it comes to the trail and the race, the only one there to support her…will be her. It’s the same way with my career. Really, the only one who is there day in and day out when I’m sitting at the keyboard is…me. If I don’t support me, then heck, it doesn’t matter if Nora Roberts herself is calling me up daily to tell me she believes in my storytelling abilities. The main support system I need is me.

And thankfully I had that, all through those ten books that didn’t sell. There was a time, though, when I quit writing. When I threw it all away (that story is here) and gave up on myself. But obviously not forever, because here I am, with books 18, 19 and 20 coming out this fall. ;-).

So, in short…I think the best support system of all is already on your back…in you! Once you believe in yourself, all those around you become the bricks building up your foundation. And that, to me, makes for a better support than anything you can get from Victoria’s Secret ;-)!

Shirley

Really Something, Zebra Books, Available December 2007