Love Hate Relationships and the Fiction Writer.

Love Hate Relationships and the Fiction Writer. 08/25/2010

My Short Story 'Teddies on Tour' is ready for its final draft read.

My main character is resolving a love hate relationship with a secondary character, as a sub plot to the story of an enduring love.

I would describe my short story as a romantic coming of age realist fiction and wonder how others would describe it as this is my first scary step into writing fiction after 50 years of writing nonfiction part time. The love hate relationship in my story has spilled over to me and I find I am in a love hate relationship with the finished story as its romantic leaning is in a genre I never personally read and I am wondering how I ever wrote it and unsure how I feel about it.

I am expressing these thoughts as I am sure all other writes go through these doubts about their writing creation and find encouragment in knoing others feel this too.

I strive to be philosophical and say this work was just a learning exercise and as such was a great success and I will put all I have learned from the experience into a better work.

THANK YOU to EVERYONE who has advised guided and patted me on the back during my August Short Story writing Month.

While many people think my short story is based on Reg and me it is actually a work of fiction. I am finding I am taking on the identity of my heroine lol :-) rather than the heroine being my identity. I got confused late last night and muddled our ages up. :-). I have created a slightly crazy heroine, lol, will I now become crazy and start talking to the a spirit as she is doing? I never set out to create this heroine, I started rewriting my short story in the first person through the mind of the protagonist in my story and her mind took over and created a very personal and emotional story.

Several times when I was telling her story for her, I found myself weeping at the emotion she was sharing. I hope I also was able to convey the humour, love, resilience and resolution of her inner conflict.

The rewrite of 'Teddies on Tour', came out different to the way I originally planed it.

I am concerned I may have written a Mills and Boon for seniors or worse.

Another writer has assured me my protagonist has more depth than a Mills and Boon story.

My story definitely ended up in a different genre than I had planned. While I read Epic coming of age novels I suspect I have overlapped into romance, though not a typical one as my couple are a long time married late middle aged couple.

As it is with a painting when just completed, I am too close to my story to know if I love or hate it, in fact I swing in both opinions.

Constrictive criticism is WELCOME.
This is a good way to learn and I am on a sharp learning curve at the moment.

Even is this story sucks, It is one of the best things I have done this year in respect to taking myself out of my comfort zone of nonfiction writing and actually completing the first nonfiction work. This, after procrastinating, on writing, a work of fiction, for fifty years. LOL, never too late, to start :-).