HAPPINESS IS?

This month’s joint blog is all about what makes us happy as writers and starting us off is 


RAE

Writing is hard and I battle daily with self-doubt, so it felt good to consider the moments when the writing Gods shone and blessed me with the right words for the right piece at the right time. My first taste of success came when I won the Romantic Novelists’ Association Elizabeth Goudge first chapter competition. And what an amazing comp to win!  The experience was so special not just because I won, but also because the trophy was awarded during a posh gala dinner in the spectacular library of Queen Mary University, London, attended by the bestselling authors I admire. What a thrill.

My second writing highlight came when I was paid (imagine that!) and saw my first short story in print. It was a Doric piece for the literary newspaper, Northwords Now and I’m equally delighted to have another, using my Doric pen name Isobel Rutland, in their latest spring edition. This was a fun post to write and I truly hope readers can find time amongst the current stresses to reflect on their personal successes too. 

VICTORIA

The happy memory I have was at the very start of my writing career. I had completed my first novel and was in that self-doubt phase of wondering if it was good enough to submit to a publisher. It was the sort of book I would enjoy reading, but would anyone else?

The story was inspired by Lanhydrock House in Cornwall, a place my family enjoy visiting. It seemed the right place to confide in my daughter, over a cream tea in their tearoom, that I had written a novel inspired by the property.

Considering my daughter had never shown any interest in the historical romance genre, I was surprised when she asked me to tell her about the story in more detail… from start to finish. A little embarrassed, I began to tell her the plot, chapter by chapter, and to my delight (and surprise), she became engrossed with the storytelling. I know my daughter well and I could see her interest was genuine. This was my happy memory, my daughter and I sitting in the summer sunshine eating jam, scones and clotted cream. It was the moment when I showed my daughter that one is never too old to strive to accomplish one’s dreams and she showed me that my novel was good enough to submit to a publisher and that I had her support.

That novel was later titled The Captain’s Daughter and became the second book in my Cornish Tales Series. I mention that special time in the Acknowledgements section in the novel and it is a memory that still warms my heart.

LINDA

Here I go, then, with my happy writing memory .... When I joined the Romantic Novelists' Association's New Writers' Scheme I'd already had over 200 short stories published. So, when the call came out for members to submit short stories for a proposed anthology I eagerly submitted MY FATHER'S HOUSE. Katie Fforde and Sue Moorcroft were the editors and they got back to me to say they loved the story, loved the writing style, but ..... it wasn't a romance (it was a father/daughter relationship story) - could I submit something else? I could. But what? 

And then I had one of those moments writers get (if they're lucky) when something pops almost fully-formed into their heads. As a teenager growing up in a Devon seaside town in the late 50s/early 60s I often went down to the beach at weekends with my school friends. In those days - and with a Cold War going on - foreign navies often moored in the bay and to we teenage girls they seemed impossibly romantic and rather exotic. I particularly remember some Russian sailors my friends and I took a particular shine to. Their uniforms were very simple and very dark, almost black, and the script on their hat-bands  unintelligible to us. So we got brave and approached them. They were, of course, a lot older than we were, possibly all married men. But that was the attraction! Conversation was rather limited but I remember the thrill when one of them jumped off the wall they were sitting on and bought ice creams for us all. 

So ... I had a story to write, and I had a 'what if' moment. What if one of us and one of those sailors had begun a romance, fallen in love, but had to part? And so From Russia With Something Like Love was born. Katie and Sue loved it. I was in. Fast forward to 2009 and the launch party which was at The Cavalry and Guards Club in London. I took my daughter as my guest. Cavalrymen in sharp uniforms with even sharper swords were on duty, shepherding us up ornate staircases and into the room where the event was held. So, there I was in the company of Joanna Trollope, Adele Parks, Anna Jacobs, Nell Dixon, Carole Matthews, Elizabeth Chadwick, Katie Flynn, Maureen Lee and many, many others. There was enough champagne to bathe in, and plenty of canapes to seriously challenge our hips. I remember looking around the room and thinking .... well, you must be okay at this writing lark to be amongst so many well-known names. It was a moment to treasure - and I do.

TERRY

The Silent Woman, my first Cat Carlisle book published in April 2018 to little fanfare and blip in publishing industry. I was still proud of the book, as the entire Cat Carlisle series is an homage to the British mysteries that I love. In June my husband and I went camping in Pagosa Springs, Colorado. We had a great three days in the mountains, with plans to check into a vacation rental on the fourth day. When we got back to civilization, I discovered that not only had The Silent Woman hit the Amazon and the USA Today best-seller list. I was totally surprised. And talk about imposter syndrome, it took me a year to put “USA Today Best-Selling Author” on my tagline. But the thing about writing that makes me happiest is sitting down at my laptop and making up stories. I love this job. So grateful that I'm able to do it. 

KATH

Write about a time when my writing has made me truly happy, asked Jennie, for this week's joint blog. In this time of coronavirus uncertainty, we wanted to write something uplifting to cheer us and our readers up.

There are two ways I can answer this one - and I'm going to give both answers. Firstly, the obvious one I suppose: writing made me truly happy, ecstatic even, when I was offered my first book deal. I'd been writing for ten years, mostly short stories and then moving onto novels, and that moment when I opened an email and saw I'd been offered a two-book deal was simply awesome. It was a Friday night and there was no one home to celebrate with, but I opened a bottle of wine anyway and toasted myself. I phoned my husband (who was away on a cycling weekend) and told him the news, and then when my younger son came home I made him leap about and squeal with excitement with me. (The very next day, my husband fell off his bike and broke his hip and wrist, necessitating surgery and leaving him on crutches for months, so my excitement was pretty short-lived!)

And the second way I can answer the question is to say that aside from the excitement, writing always makes me happy, in a long-term contented kind of way. I always knew I wanted to write and now that I am making a decent living from my novels it's a dream come true. I might sometimes feel frustrated by it, it might occasionally (often, if I'm honest!) feel like a struggle to get going, it might be hard work but underneath it makes me profoundly happy that I can make stuff up and people enjoy reading it. Sigh. Long may it last! 

JO 

Memory is a funny thing. I have a theory that it recalls the unusual rather than the norm. My earliest memories are of abnormal events that scared me (the car breaking down in a ford when I was about four and became convinced I would drown, for example, or sitting squeezed up on a bench on an unpleasantly hot day in stifling tent at the Shrewsbury Flower Show). 

They aren’t all scary, though. I distinctly remember being got out of bed in the middle of the nigh and being made to watch the Moon landings, although at the time I didn’t really know what was going on.

My happy memories are much less specific and they tend to blur into one another, the more so as I think further back. Being lost in a book. (Inevitable, I know.) Heading away on family holidays and loving the scenery as we passed, in Dartmoor or North Wales. Paddling in rock pools at low tide and watching the tiny shrimps shooting away. (This is one I later replicated with my children and it was just as good.)

But writing memories? Writing is so integral to me that talking about a writing memory would be like describing my eye colour as a memory, if that makes sense. So I'll go with my earliest writing memory. I must have been seven or eight and I was writing in a notebook. And I remember what I wrote: I woke up to the sound of the bagpipes and my teddy bear, Thomasina, dressed in Black Watch tartan, was dancing a Highland fling on my tummy.

The rest of this document, alas, is lost... 

JENNIE

Writing makes me happy in all sorts of ways but the best way of all only recently started to happen. Readers are taking their time to write and tell me how much they enjoyed one or other of my books because for a few hours  their real life problems were pushed aside. Two recent e-mails from different readers have particularly made me happy. One began, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you your books have helped me keep my sanity in this pandemic world’ and the other was from a new widow who’d lost her husband during the pandemic and hadn’t been allowed to attend his funeral. Reading one of my books had managed to lift her spirits enough for her to think tentatively of the future. Hearing how much my books mean to readers provides motivation for me to keep going when the going gets tough!