One of my college babysitter’s friends was over last night and she loved my office with its three bulletin board collages. She wanted to know about the collages, the stacks and stacks of magazines in my office, and how I use the collages and magazines in my writing.

I told her leafing through magazines (my favorites include Vanity Fair, Town & Country, National Geographic, Gourmet, Oprah, Traveler, & People) gives me ideas for my books and looking at pictures, as well as reading interviews and profiles, trigger connections…helping me link what might be disparate thoughts into one cohesive, and hopefully, compelling story. When I read about someone’s childhood, or the struggles a woman has faced, I have these little aha! moments which in turn became plot points for my book.

Some writers can plot out the whole story and say, ‘this is conflict, this is his issue, this is hers and this stands in the way.’ Now I can do that, too, but when I actually write, the words often come out differently. The dialogue and situation will frequently feel fake. My characters will have the issues and goals and conflicts I’ve given them, but somehow it won’t quite work. It lacks the ‘magic’ ingredient and I really never know what the magic ingredient is until I dig into the story, try to write, get frustrated, try to write some more, step back and analyze why the story isn’t interesting, why the situation doesn’t have the emotional resonance I want.

That’s when the magazines and reading come in handy. That’s when profiles and biographies and interviews all go into that mush pot of my brain, mix around, and simmers.

Now I really start world building. I return to my bulletin boards, go back to my binders and pictures torn from Traveler, pictures taken from Brides Magazine, pictures from Vanity Fair and I start asking myself, ‘what if….?’

What if this elegant woman is really terrified of the glamorous world she’s come to inhabit?

What if this charming playboy isn’t really charming? What if he’s not even a playboy? What if he’s brilliant? Or dangerous?

What if this young woman had sixteen operations by her fourteenth birthday?

What if her parents divorced when she was ten? Remarried when she was twelve? Divorced again when she was fifteen? And remarried ten years later again?

What if the gossip magazines were right?

What if the evening news was wrong?

What if?

This is how I write. I don’t write for weeks (although I do sit at the computer but the pages don’t exactly pile up. It’s what I call my lateral writing phase. I just write the same scenes sometimes over and over and over until it feels right and becomes the proper skin for the story.) And then eventually I do write. I must. The deadline is on me, the characters are bored, and I’m panicky as hell.

My babysitter’s friend told me she’d like to try to write a book but didn’t know where to begin. I told her I don’t believe in beginnings. I just jump in. Beginnings are circular, anyway. Beginnings always lead us to the end and endings become beginnings so dive in, write what is most urgent and compelling and let the story unfold from there. At a later point, in an editing phase, you can cut and paste and move scenes around. But for now, just start. Hear what your characters are saying. See what they’re doing. Find out who these people really are.

Which is exactly what I’m doing with my current book and I’m doing things that I’m not supposed to be doing (again) and using settings Harlequin doesn’t publish and careers that don’t sell and I’m really having a good time.

At this point in the game, what makes writing for Harlequin so much fun? Breaking all the rules. Five years ago I couldn’t do what I do now. But by consistently trying to push the edge of the envelope, my editors–and readers-are no longer surprised when I take huge risks. Some of the risks pay off. Some don’t. But it’s the trying that makes the writing life rewarding. I always say, if you’re going to go down or out–do it in a blaze of glory.

All right, I’ll tell you my secret. You want to know how I produce books and travel as much as I do? You want to know the truth?

I don’t write. And then I write a lot. How much is a lot? Could be 75 pages a day, three days in a row. Could be 10 chapters in 6 days. Eleven chapters in 5. A book in a week. And stop–please don’t sit there and think, ‘Wow! That’s cool. That’s amazing.’ It’s not cool. It’s not amazing. It’s crazy, absolutely not healthy and potentially destructive. But it works for me because I don’t always write. And you’re thinking, she means she doesn’t always write like *that*, and no, I’m meaning I don’t always write.

Remember how I’ve said I write hot and cold? Mmm hmph. That’s exactly what I do. No writing, incredible procrastination, lots of reading, magazine skimming, catalog browsing, internet surfing. I travel, plan marketing programs, answer email, outline new workshops, have lunch, be with my kids, admire my new cover art, pretend my book is written, pretend my editor won’t ever figure out that I don’t need three months to write a book. Just ten awful endless panicked days.

Why am I telling you this? Because a good friend of mine, Australian Harlequin/Silhouette author, Lilian Darcy has given me permission to write the way I write, which is like a maniac. Lilian says this is simply the way I create. Fuming, stewing, avoiding, denying, pacing, stomping, ignoring…followed by intense concentration, a focus so determined and driven that I can and will work eighteen or more hours a day and think it’s only four.

Sometimes the writing I produce that way is really good, and sometimes its crap, but I’m learning that those intense mind dumps help me cut through the comfortable surface writing where ideas and story lines are familiar, to the more original, harder to reach stuff below. By going ‘deep into character’ for a week or two I live my book. The story is all around me, not just in my head waiting to be told, but sitting on my desk, crouching on a bookshelf to my left, sprawled on the carpet at my feet. I know this sounds mental–but by thinning the line between creativity and reality, fact and fiction, I eliminate the controller in me, that editor that criticizes allowing me to just do what I want, which is to ‘make stuff up’.

‘Making stuff up’ doesn’t sound very intellectual, and far from literary (but oh, do go read Ray Bradbury’s ‘Zen and The Art of Writing’ because his essays on writing are by far my favorite. This book is my favorite writing book ever.) but that’s how I get to the good juicy stuff. The good stuff is deep within us, buried in the imagination, tragically trapped and tamed. By giving oneself over to the writing process, you�re letting the creative beast free. You�re letting yourself free.

But that can be scary. I find it rather scary to just let myself �go�. To dig down into places�thoughts, emotions�that might not be proper. That maybe shouldn�t be thought, spoken, felt. But the taboo, the forbidden is exactly where the writer must go. Or at least, it�s where I must go.

The writer in me must be cut loose. Unfettered. Free.

So if you are a writer and you crave power and passion in your stories, or if you are a writer struggling to meet a deadline or just struggling to get the story from here to there, let me encourage you—go crazy. Be eccentric. Tell the world you’re busy. Tell everybody to go away. Then write. Write furiously, write intensely, write wildly, passionately. Write as though your life depended on it. Write as though the devil were after you and your feet are on fire.

Run. Run. And as you’re running you’ll see me running next to you. Like a bat out of hell.

Easy writing doesn’t happen often for me anymore.

In the ‘old’ days, back before I published, back before I’d been rejected for 15 years on 12 different manuscripts, writing was easy. I sat down, I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. The words flowed, the characters talked, (and talked and talked) and my books ended with a big bang. I loved writing in those early days (the 80’s and early 90’s) and it wasn’t until ten years of rejections began to make me desperate that the writing got hard. It was hard because I didn’t know what the publishers wanted. It was hard because I didn’t know why I wasn’t delivering what they wanted when I thought what I was writing was good. I didn’t know how to improve the writing to make it better–or make it acceptable to the publishers. I didn’t know how to handle my own hopes or expectations as I thought my books were getting better and better.

Twenty years later–twenty years from the point I started writing romance novels–and five years from the point of having the first book bought I look at the before pub Jane and the post pub Jane and shake my head. Yes, I’m a far more skilled writer now than I was then. But even more interestingly, I’m so much tougher. I’m not confident as in ‘oh, I’m wonderful’, but confident as ‘oh, I’m not quitting’ and ‘you can try to knock me down, but you’re not keeping me on the ground.’ It’s a fighter spirit, a spirit that’s necessary not just for dealing with the publishing business, but the creative life. It’s necessary for handling life as a mom, a wife, a friend, a writer.

For the first time in years, the writing is downright easy. I hate saying it, must knock on wood, but the writing is a strange dreamlike process where the words just come and I sit there, fingers poised above the keyboard channeling whatever it is I’m channeling. I’m telling a story I feel strongly about, a story that sits in my heart, weighing on my sense of rightness and wrongess, fairness and injustice, and maybe not all readers will relate to the story, but I can only hope I do justice to it. That I make the characters come alive and the emotions honest and real and the conflict believable, and therefore meaningful.

I’ll be done with this book in weeks and then it’s back to my brand new Harlequin manuscript–a Hollywood film story with all the drama of Vanity Fair magazine and the glitter and fashion of People. It’ll be a wonderful story to write after Flirting with Forty and I’m already crossing my fingers that the easy writing will continue. And if it doesn’t, let me be the first to say how grateful I am for a book that came to me in a flash, and hasn’t let go. I’m not sure if I’m a writer as much as a genie, but right now at this point in my life, I’m going with it.