Hello, my name is Sarah Grimm, and I’m an addict. I read my first romance when I was twelve years old. I don’t recall the title, you think I would with something that changed my life so dramatically, but I don’t. The title doesn’t really matter does it because it was just the beginning for me? That one book led to another, then another. Pretty soon I was devouring romances like my life depended on them. Somehow, I didn’t see anything strange about that.
 
One day my mother walked into my room without knocking and she caught me reading.   I dropped that book so fast, tucking it under my thigh so she couldn’t see the cover! But I wasn’t fast enough. My mother knew what I was doing – reading romance in a ‘mystery’ house.
 
She kept an eye on me after that, locating all the paperback and hardcovers in my closet and under my bed. She told me I had a problem. I told her I couldn’t stop – even to make her happy. Instead, I lured her into my world. I gave her her first romance, then her second; her third. She is stronger than me – romance never took control of her the way it did me.
 
I began reading romance everywhere: curled in the corner of the couch while the family watched television, in the back of the classroom while the teacher talked biology. I didn’t need to learn biology, I had romance novels. I couldn’t get enough – the promise of happily-ever-after, of love being enough to heal all wounds. *sigh*
 
In no time at all my addiction grew stronger. Just reading romances wasn’t enough. Suddenly I had this urge, this new and frightening, uncontrollable urge…to write. I wasn’t strong enough to resist. Who is? I began carrying a notebook with me everywhere I went. A notebook I filled with dialogue and partial chapters, story ideas and possible titles. Some days it got so bad that the world around me faded away. While others enjoyed the sun or the lake, I wrote.
 
It’s hard for some people to understand, this addiction to romance. I’ve endured the odd looks, the smirks, and even those who say, “You’re poisoning your brain with that stuff.”
Well guess what, if stories that celebrate falling in love, emotion and commitment are poison, I don’t want the antidote! I love the stuttered heartbeats when the hero and heroine first meet, the gut punch of sexual awareness. My heart races with the sweetness of that first kiss, and the momentary panic over the realization they’ve fallen in love. I thrive on the idea how even at the worst of times, at those moments when you least expect it, two people can find love.
 
Yes my friends, I’m an addict, and happily-ever-after is my drug of choice.

Writing has never come easy for me. It’s a compulsion, an obsession really, which is why I do it. But it’s also a long pain filled process. Not just because I can’t seem to write anything that isn’t laced with deep emotion, or as my friend and fellow writer Vonnie Davis calls it, “emotions so sensually thick they wrap around you like a plump down comforter”.
 
Dialogue is the easy part. Perhaps because I honest and truly hear my characters voices in my head. They talk, I take dictation. My first drafts are always just that; dialogue. Conversations between the characters: comment, response, comment. Page after page after page of dialogue that may or may not have any sort of tag as to who is speaking. If there are more than just two characters conversing, I will leave a name behind the line of dialogue, but that’s all it will be: “dialogue” name
 
The next time I go through my work in progress I sprinkle in emotion. Sometimes this is easy as I’ve always had the ability to put myself into my characters shoes and FEEL what they feel. But sometimes that ability makes every word, every glimpse inside the character a painful, highly emotional, and draining experience. Then there are the times I’m not exactly certain what my character is feeling. If that sounds odd to you, go back and look at the bit about dialogue. My characters speak, I take dictation. That can leave me guessing right along with the hero whether or not his last comment angered the heroine.
 
So what’s the worst part of writing, the most difficult part for me? Choreography. Yup, you read that correctly, choreography: who does what when, how they move, and what expression they wear as they deliver their emotion packed line of dialogue. I loathe that part. Loathe. It. I don’t kid myself and think I am the only one, but I will guess those like me are in the minority. I’ve seen a multitude of classes on dialogue, but I’ve yet to see one on ‘getting your character across the room’. Laugh if you want to. Heck, I’ll laugh with you. Spending days staring at a nearly complete manuscript, searching for the right way to describe an action while ‘show, don’t tell’ runs endlessly through your mind... It’s quite pathetic.
 
In the end – after more than a few curse words, false starts, and glasses of wine – I’m usually happy with what I’ve got. Sure, you will nearly always find more dialogue and emotion in my books than actual character movement, but I don’t write action thrillers so that’s okay. Besides, by that final run through of my WIP, the stars of my next book are chattering away in my head, insisting that I get to telling their story. Let me assure you, you don’t want to put off a demanding alpha male for too long, or he’ll start interfering with your sleep. And not in a way that is at all physically pleasing.
 
 
 

 
As a writer, the question I get asked the most is ‘Where do you get your ideas?’. The second most popular question I am asked is ‘Once you have an idea, where do you begin?’. This question is actually a bit more difficult to answer, but I’ll try. Story ideas come to me all of the time. The trick is being patient enough to wait and see if the idea has legs. What I mean is, some ideas come to me like a butterfly, then flit away just as quickly. Then there are the ones that stick, the heroes who won’t stop talking to you, even at three in the morning, that question that hangs in the air, day and night, that I feel compelled to answer. These are the ideas with legs. The ideas that force me to put pen to paper - or more and more often now, fingers to keyboard – and begin writing. These are the ideas that become my works in progress, or WIPs.
 
Once I’m ready to begin writing, I...heck, I’d love to tell you that I have a series of questions I ask myself or an outline I’ve worked up, but that’s not how it works for me. You see, I’m what they call a pantser – which means I write by the ‘seat of my pants’. That’s right, I don’t have much more than a title (which I can’t seem to begin without), and my hero and heroine’s name. If the idea came to me in the form of a question, which it sometimes does, then I have a bit more. If it came to me in the form of the hero’s voice in my head, nagging me to get on with it and tell his story, then I may only know how it ends. After all, heroes aren’t always prone to tell you how he got himself in the position he’s in, just how he wants that story to end. LOL
 
But, if the story idea came to me in the form of the opening scene (which is usually how they come to me) then I don’t know much at all. Maybe just what kind of person the hero/heroine is. And that’s when the fun begins for me, the moment I sit down and just begin typing. Letting the story unfold as it may, discovering the events that take the characters from the opening scene to the happily-ever-after. Yup, I just dive right in. No character sketches, outlines, or blurbs. Not until I’m farther into the story – like half way. For me, knowing too much before I begin spoils the fun. A complete outline before I’ve written a single scene, and I’ve lost the excitement, feel as if I’ve already told the story. Odd, I know, but true.   
 
So that’s how I start a WIP. I get an idea stuck in my head, think on it a bit, then take myself and the voices in my head to my laptop and start writing. Does that make me sound a bit unhinged? Probably. However, I believe on some level all writers are…but that’s a different blog post.

*****
"Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing." ~ Margaret Chittenden

10 Things You Might Not Know About Sarah Grimm
 
 

1. I’m a reformed Diet Coke addict. I still need a shot of caffeine in the morning though, and find it in an energy drink.
2. I get bored very easily. Things like paint color, furniture arrangement, and my hair color change a lot. Especially my hair color – right now it’s reddish brown!
3. I love to drag race and target shoot. Not that great at racing yet, but am a very good shot.
4. I’m a pantser not a plotter. This means I’m as surprised as my readers with what happens to my characters in my books.  don’t like using names in books of people that I know. However, I will apply character traits and habits of people I know to the characters i my books.
5. I was a tomboy growing up and still don’t wear makeup unless I’m at a conference or an important event.
6. I played the string and electric bass when I was younger. Was first chair in orchestra!
7. I don’t like receiving flowers as gifts. They die.
8. I secretly wish I could sing without it sounding like cats fighting.
9. I love to give my animals odd names. My cats have been Sneaker, Sebastian, Tweed, and George (like the old Bugs Bunny cartoon, lol) and my newest dog is named Gustave Rutherford.
10. Every hero I write has a little bit of my husband in him.
    

I discovered this beautiful dress on a resale site in my area and fell in love. Unfortunately it isn't my size. Well, maybe it's fortunate since the only place I could wear it is around my house. LOL

Since cleaning the house in a white dress and tiara is completely unpractical,
I decided that one of my characters needs to have this dress.

~*~

What inspires you?