Deciding to Write

A night of restless sleep…

I wish I could say I studied writing, or that I aspired to be a writer for years, however my story doesn’t go that way. In truth I was a avid reader for most of my life. I remember being convinced as a child that I hated reading because I didn’t like spelling. Little did I know that a wonderful thing called spellcheck would one day exist and prove me wrong. As embarrassing as it is to admit my love of reading came during a summer where The Babysitters Club series became popular. I read each and everyone of those books at a speed that shocked even my parents.

Fast forward one too many years later and I stumbled my way into reading romance. Fun, flirty books that almost always ended in a happily ever after, took over my bookshelves and eventually my Kindle. You see, I am a sucker for a happily ever after. It’s bad really, if an author doesn’t give me what I’m looking for then I won’t touch another of her books. If I do get what I want, then I will proceed to read everything else she has ever written, regardless of genre. Even the bad ones. (And yes, good authors write bad books sometimes)

A few years ago I found that as I was reading books written by others I keep thinking about different ways I would like to see the story go, or different characteristics of main characters I was unknowingly creating in my mind. It was late one night and I had just finished reading another romance when it hit me. Maybe if I just wrote it down I could get these people out of my head and move on to my next book. I wrote a story of a woman named Sophia who left her partner of years after finding herself pregnant and knowing he didn’t want kids. It was right up my ally. I wrote it, closed the Microsoft Word doc and forgot about it.

I should clarify, when I say wrote it I obsessively sat in front of my computer for about three days and nights as I pounded out a 30,000 word story. It was insane. I didn’t know if it was good or bad, all I knew was I had written it. So you see, for me, there really wasn’t a decision to write. Just a driving need to tell a story that wouldn’t leave me alone. It was a story I liked and something I would read but I didn’t have a plan to do anything with it. So there it sat, on my computer minding it’s own business.

Or so I thought…

It was a couple years later that I decided to try again. I pulled up the saved files on my computer and couldn’t remember what I saved it as. I had a million things on that computer and opened literally every word document on that thing. I could not find it! After much frustration I gave up and took it as a sign. Here’s where the story gets better. Eventually months later I found it, and I saved it again, and saved it on a flash drive! Then that computer died and the flash drive disappeared. I can’t make this stuff up.

I’m Italian, which comes with a certain amount of superstitions. I was convinced that it wasn’t meant to be. I mean who finds and loses a book twice! Me… I do. I’m still holding out hope that some day Sophia’s story will turn up again. I have even toyed around with the idea of just rewriting it, but I haven’t. When gave up on Sophia I found Jason and Christy. It’s their story you will hear first. Unbelievable should release later this summer and I am beyond excited it’s come this far.

So for those of you out there thinking some grand gesture, formal education, or writing on the wall needs to happen… I’ll share with you today that it doesn’t. It just takes an idea and a bout of insomnia.

Happy Writing.

Nikki Rome