Ruth Ann Nordin's Author Blog

There is a mindset within the writing community that says authors should write books as fast as they can just so they can keep up the income. I realize this has faded somewhat, but it still prevails; hence the growing popularity of using AI to help write stories. If writers weren’t pressed to get books out quicker, they would do more writing themselves. I know some people say that AI does a good job of writing a story, but I have a hard time believing it. AI is not human. It never will be. It might come close, but the human brain will always be more creative.

The AI movement, however, can be harmful. I don’t mind AI to assist the writer as long as the writer isn’t using AI to actually write the book. If AI becomes the writer, I think that does a disservice to storytelling. Maybe I’m outdated, but I think good storytelling will always matter. Maybe people rushing through books won’t care if AI wrote it. People rushing through books aren’t getting immersed in the story. They are just jumping from book to book. I have no idea how anyone can really enjoy a book if they rush through it, but perhaps I’m missing something. I’ll concede to the possibility that total enjoyment can occur when something is consumed at a fast pace. All I know is that I can’t enjoy something if I rush through it.

Anyway…

I have a hard time believing that readers who have to pay for individual books will continue to buy from an author who doesn’t take the time to craft a story that means something to them. If the writer loves the work, it will show up in the book. I think a few typos will be acceptable. Even traditionally published books and blockbuster movies have small errors that crop into the final product. But you can’t put out something rushed.

That’s why it’s best to take the time you need to write your story. Some stories flow better than others. Some stories are like pulling teeth. Ironically, some of my best books were those I struggled with the most to write. (Go figure, right?) Sometimes you have to let the story play out in its own time. If that means pushing back a pre-order date, do it. I know it’s “unprofessional” to not meet a deadline, but it’s better to get the story right than to have a story out there that you never want to read again. For example, if you rush a story to get it out there and feel in your gut that the story didn’t go exactly as it should have, that will set you up for disappointment in your own work.

Whatever the genre, you want a comping conflict and the emotionally engaging characters to go with it. That will ensure the story is the very best it can be. If you are in the middle of a story, and you feel that this story is going in a wrong direction, that is a good indicator to slow down and figure out where you went wrong. Or, perhaps, you have done everything right up to this point, but then you feel like you’re going to head in a direction that will make the story suffer. You might want to pause in the writing and give yourself time to think about what you can do next to keep flowing well.

I realize that in an atmosphere where money is the supreme goal of writing, it is not easy to take the time you might need to get the story right. Going slower may cause you to lose some money. Losing money is very difficult. I know this from experience. It sucks when you can no longer easily pay your bills anymore. But bills aren’t your only worry when you lose money. You might worry that you will lose some clout in the writing community because, as unfair as it may be, those who make the most money get the most support from other writers. Often when you go into writing forums, anyone giving advice without having the all-sought-after “six figure income” will be dismissed. So making money is more than paying bills. It is about establishing your reputation in the writing community.

I would like for every author who loves their work to be able to make a living at it. We should all be so lucky as to make a living doing the thing we love most. Unfortunately, sometimes we are forced to choose. Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while now know where I fall in this debate. But just in case someone new is coming here, let me rehash my perspective below.

I think rushing through a story and putting up something that is mediocre does you and your readers a disservice. I also think using AI to write the story for you does your readers a disservice. When your readers pick up your books, they are expecting you. The best way you can honor your readers is to give them “you”. The ultimate goal of writing should be to leave a legacy after you die. I used to laugh when authors told me that because, at the time, I did think money was more important, but I have learned a lot since I left the writing-to-market phase of my life. And now I am in complete agreement with the people who think more along the lines of writing books that will emotionally mean something to people who read them in the generations to come. The best stories are those that reach out and touch the readers’ heart. And it can take time to write stories like that.

Years and years ago, I did an anthology with Janet Syas Nitsick. This anthology was published by a small press.

This press is no longer in operation, and Janet has a stack of these books the publisher gave her before shutting its doors. We brainstormed on what to do with these books. Goodwill donations are on the table. We really don’t want to throw them out. But before dropping these at Goodwill, which might toss these out anyway, I’d prefer to give these to someone who enjoys our work.

The only thing is that we can only afford to send them to people in the US. The cost of everything has gone up to the point where she and I are feeling the pinch in our wallets.

We have a total of 20 copies of each book. So we would send you both Bride by Arrangement and A Groom’s Promise. And yes, we will be happy to sign them. If this is a gift, we can mail them to someone else. If this is a gift, tell us the person’s name and address. 😀

Bride by Arrangement contains my story “The Purchased Bride” and Janet’s story “She Came by Train”.

A Groom’s Promise contains my story, “The Bride’s Choice” and Janet’s story “When the Whistle Blows”.

Below I am linking to pages on my blog and hers so you can read what they are about:

My blog (The Purchased Bride and The Bride’s Choice)

Janet’s blog (I just saw that these are not on her blog or her website, so I’ll direct you to her Amazon links): Here is for She Came by Train and here is for When the Whistle Blows

If interested, fill out the form below:

If you have trouble filling out the form, leave a comment below with your email so I can address the issue.

Things are going great with my two works in progress. It’s so nice to have my enthusiasm for writing back. Taking it down to two books at a time has really helped. I also am allowing myself days off from writing even if I scheduled the day down as a “writing day” in advance. Like today, for instance. It was supposed to be a writing day, but things came about that made the morning crazy, so I’m not going to worry about it. Instead, I’m writing this blog post. 😀

Alright, so let me get to the meat and potatoes of this post.

I am halfway in Tagalong Bride.

I am still debating what to do with the hero’s sister. I know I’m going to base Book 2 off of her, but I am currently undecided as to who the hero will be. I can choose the rancher she’s supposed to marry (since she was a mail-order bride), or I can go with the deputy who has a big secondary character role in Tagalong Bride. I plan to bring in the Arizona rancher soon in Tagalong Bride. I’m hoping once he enters the picture, I’ll get an idea of what I want to do with him.

Also, someone had mentioned liking the older-than-average character finding their romance, and I want to do that in this series. I am just trying to figure out how to get this character involved.

As for the main story of Tagalong Bride, I’m very happy with how well things are going. I’m about to separate out the hero and heroine from the deputy who has been their guide up to now. I’m looking forward to that because I have some funny moments I expect to bring in that will be entertaining. The desert has all sorts of neat critters to work with when someone who is used to living in a city is exposed to them. The hero, it’s turning out, is the one who is far more squeamish than the heroine is, though I don’t expect her to be all that happy when confronted with a scorpion, either.

I’m getting close to the halfway point in Anyone But You.

Or at least I think I am. I’m not sure how long this will be. I’m at 23,000 words, and the hero and heroine have barely spoken to each other. The hero just let the heroine know she is welcome to put any of her things around the townhouse to make it “her” home, in addition to his, and she will take him up on that offer. Right away, I knew what object she would pick to put in the drawing room to test whether or not he’s serious in his offer. I won’t say what it is because I don’t want to spoil the book. I will say that what happened in Midnight Wedding will have some significance because of this object. I also believe this object will end up being the thing that will begin the transition from the heroine hating the hero to finding something redeemable about him.

Worth the Risk is in the final stages of edits.

I would like this out in May. *fingers crossed*

Janet Syas Nitsick and I made another post on our blog.

Open Discussion: “Well, that didn’t go as planned…”

This time, we discussed things that didn’t go as planned. I don’t know if anyone here would like to share their stories, but we would love to hear them if you have something on your mind. 🙂

A friend tried to explain it to me years ago. She said that this particular trope in romance is popular because women like to think they can be the one to change him.

I thought that was one of the most illogical statements I’d ever heard, and it still makes no sense to me. If a woman were to change the bad boy, then he would be good, and if he was good, wouldn’t she lose interest in him? Then I thought, “Maybe being with a bad boy is like being in a movie where you wonder if he’ll ever commit or not.” (Let’s forget the notion that if he does commit to a woman, he might not stick with it since the bad boy image entails him being “bad”.) But maybe that is the excitement. Will he or won’t he? That’s exciting, I guess, but it doesn’t last longer than the end of the book.

I looked up the definition of a rake (a term I’ve heard a lot from Regency books. This is what I came up with in Google, “In a historical context, a rake (short for rakehell, analogous to “hellraiser”) was a man who was habituated to immoral conduct, particularly womanizing. Often, a rake was also prodigal, wasting his (usually inherited) fortune on gambling, wine, women, and song, and incurring lavish debts in the process.” (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rake_(stock_character))

Exactly what in that description makes a man appealing? He is given to sleeping around. That means he probably has an assortment of STDs. He possibly has children with other women. He does not have any intention of staying with the woman he sleeps with, which means he uses women for his own selfish pleasures. Even if he marries, chances are he won’t be faithful because of his past behavior. The only case I can see where a bad boy gets truly redeemed is if he has a “come to Jesus moment” which would involve serious repentance. But in books and in movies, we don’t often see him doing this. He is often portrayed as an egotistical jerk who, for whatever reason, the heroine finds sexy. He knows she finds him sexy and uses it to his advantage. He doesn’t care about morality. He essentially has been bad and has gotten away without facing the consequences of being bad, and he won’t really ever face them. I find it hard to believe that this is a man who will truly hold the heroine in high esteem for a lifetime, which is what marriage is about.

Let’s remove the womanizing from the equation. What makes a man given to wasting his money away appealing? What woman wants to wonder if the bills are going to be paid because this carefree and wild man is reckless with money? I don’t care if he’s the most charming person on the planet; if he doesn’t provide for his wife and kids, he’s not worth respecting.

But the bad boy trope is one that sells very well. I can’t argue that this is a fantasy that is popular in the romance genre. It’s not my cup of tea, and this is one of the reasons I started writing my own romances. I got tired of heroes that had notches on their bedposts.

Let’s talk about the “good guy”. I looked up “define good guy” on Google and came up with this, “…someone you can rely on, someone with a bit of backbone and courage, someone with integrity, someone who is generous and giving. A good guy is someone to be admired.” I looked up “good boy” as well and came up with this, “treating others with kindness and respect, avoiding being vulgar, and showing a kind interest in people.”

So that’s what popped up in Google, and I realize there is a slang for “good boy” that has to do with some sexual thing, but that’s not what I’m talking about in this post. I am talking about the “good boy” trope. This is the boy next door thing.

Let me Google “boy next door”. This is what came up, “If you refer to someone as the boy next door or the girl next door, you mean that they are pleasant, respectable, and likeable.” (source: https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/the-boy-next-door-the-girl-next-door)

When I think of the “good boy” in romance, these are the traits I think of. Someone you can rely on. Courageous. Willing to help others. Selfless. Honorable. Kind. Polite. Genuinely cares about the heroine. He doesn’t just see her as a sex object. She is someone he’ll be faithful to. He will give her his name and take care of her. She doesn’t have to wonder if he loves her because she’s secure in the relationship. He doesn’t compare her to other women because he is complete with her. He works hard. He doesn’t boast of himself. He might have a sense of humor, he can be outgoing, or he might be quiet. Regardless, he will put her needs first. I don’t see how a woman can resist loving someone like this.

One might argue, “But that is so BORING.” It’s only boring to read if you can’t think of a plot to throw at the couple to make things interesting. Years ago (okay, more like decades ago now that I’m 49), one of my biggest gripes with romance was how unrealistic they were. I couldn’t see how any woman could enjoy being with a man who treated sex casually. I also couldn’t see how any couple could have a “happily ever after” after spending pages and pages in angst with each other. In real life, marriage is about working together to overcome the obstacles in life. So that’s what I set out to resolve when I started writing my own romances. In July, I’ll be married for 24 years. I realize love isn’t always easy. Yes, there will be arguments. There will be times when you wonder, “Why did I pick this person?” The truth is, he’ll wonder why he picked you, too. You can’t have happy sunny “it’s all perfect” every day of your marriage. We’re imperfect people. There will be storms. But the commitment of marriage is what makes the relationship so beautiful. The vows are sacred. If you have a good guy, you have someone you can count on no matter what. That is why I love the “good guy” trope so much. It’s realistic. You don’t have to change him into someone who is good because he was that way all along. And if you can fall in love with this kind of guy to start with, you will have a happily ever after ending in books and in real life.

So give me the “good guy”. The bad ones aren’t worth it.

So once again, the topic of sex scenes in a romance came up a while back while I was talking to someone. It made me analyze a subject I haven’t thought about in a long time. I believe it was back in 2009 when I was at a crossroads in what to do with my romances. I had just started writing romances, and I had to decide what kind of romance writer would I be? Would I be the traditional Christian romance writer who did the “squeaky clean” policy, or would I veer off into a path that very few Christian romances writers would pursue? Originally, I did write them without the sex scenes. The problem was that the stories felt incomplete to me.

Eye of the Beholder was the book that convinced me to add them in. I tried writing that book without those scenes, and it just wasn’t working. There was a void in the story. The love scenes between Dave and Mary needed to be there in order to understand how his love made her feel beautiful. She needed to be desired on an intimate level. And I had to show it in order for that to come across. After Eye of the Beholder, I wrote His Redeeming Bride, and that also needed those scenes to show how healing intimate moments were for Neil and Sarah. I could have “told” you it brought them closer together, but showing it added a lawyer of depth that made the story stronger.

Since then, I have realized that I learned a lot about the characters by the way they treat each other in the bedroom. Sometimes I realize they learn something about the other they didn’t before. At other times, I learn something about the character through the scene. For example, in The Convenient Mail Order Bride, I wrote, “He’d never felt so close to another person.  For the first time in his life, he was whole.  All along, a part of him had been missing and he didn’t know it until now.” The truth is, I didn’t know that about him, either, until that moment, and I never would have known it if I hadn’t written the intimate scene that accompanied those sentences. My point is that writing those scenes are important to the story because they add a layer to the characters I can’t otherwise show (or even learn from). Those layers aren’t always serious. Sometimes they are lighthearted, like in Taming the Viscountess. I write them for what is right for the characters in the story.

This is where I went off-tangent for a bit, but I think this should be addressed, so I left this in my blog post:

It’s sad that in the Christian sphere, people have taken something beautiful that God created and decided it’s wrong to write about it. I also think a lot of Christian writers should add more depth to the thrillers and horror stories they write. They don’t go dark enough for the story lines they are using. Life can get dark. There’s no sense in avoiding it. If you are going to reach deep into the human experience and make a story about it, then it needs to resonate on the written page. In my opinion, Christian fiction would be a lot more interesting if Christians weren’t afraid to address mature themes. Regardless of the genre, I like to see Christians taking a story and diving deep into it instead of brushing over it with a “Pollyanna” approach. I’d love to consume more Christian content that wasn’t watered down. Watered-down stuff is boring. Boring is forgettable.

Back to the subject of the actual post:

I understand if a writer decides to leave sex scenes out. I have no problem with that. But I don’t understand why those people think all Christian writers need to approach their romances the same way. I’m not writing these scenes to arouse. I’m writing them to advance the story. I realize that they can arouse simply by the nature of the subject, but then, I think about other subjects a person can write in their books and how those subjects also bring forth some response within us.

I spent a couple of chapters writing Loving Eliza and feeling hungry because she hadn’t had a full stomach in for days. I would even eat a full meal before writing those scenes and would feel like hungry. To this day, I still think that’s the strangest thing I ever experienced as a writer. I remember being really angry after writing scenes in The Fugitive’s Bride because Wade was so mad at Charles. After writing those scenes, I had to stop myself from banging doors or snapping at my family. It took effort to separate out what my character felt from my own personal life. (I was actually happy so it was weird how writing changed that.) The same is true for depression. When a character is sad, I’ll cry and be all melancholy. I was relieved when Amanda finally started feeling like it was okay for her to accept Richard’s love in Wagon Trail Bride. That meant I no longer had to feel so depressed. My husband thought I was crazy. He never understood why I was moping around the house during that time. When I wrote Return of the Aliens, I spent weeks nearly jumping out of my skin because the characters were so spooked, especially Alex who had those episodes of terror. My point in this rambling is that it doesn’t matter what the topic is. If a writer is fully emerged in the story, the writer will experience every single thing the characters do. That’s what makes for good writing. It’s a plus if the writer can make the reader feel that way, too.

So I write sex scenes for that reason. I feel the stories are more complete when I add them to the book. If that’s not your cup of tea, you don’t have to read them. There are a ton of romances out there without sex scenes in them. But I find very few Christian romance writers who do add them in. It makes it hard to cross promote when you don’t find others like you. It’s unfortunate that Rose Gordon stopped writing because she was one who did. I don’t know of any others. If anyone does, I would love to find their books. Hopefully, they will be on audiobook so I can listen to their work.