Regards from Ireland.
Vanessa.

Sorry for the late reply. I’ve been so busy with my deadlines and your comment deserved a longer answer than I would have been to give at that time.

So now the book is in, let’s see what I can tell you.

I didn’t start writing with a thought toward publication until I’d been in the States ten years. By that time, English had become my primary language. I thought in it–not partly, but entirely.

I never made a choice to write in English. Rather, I couldn’t have done it in any other language. (I needed a dictionary to write in Chinese at that point, because I kept forgetting how characters looked like. And as the vast majority of my reading had been in English for a while, I no longer knew what exactly was good writing in Chinese.)

And of course, it made no sense to write in a different language since U.S. is the largest market for historical romances and books are published in English.

My advice is general, whether English is your first language or not: Read. Read the best books you can find. Understand what is it you love most about the books you love, and then try to recreate it.

That’s how I started. Hope it helps.

(sorry)

I discovered your site after Emily Bryan has referred your name on a comment she left on my blog.

I’m still giving my first steps on writing my first book. If it will be ever published I don’t know or wonder for now.

I believe a lot on studying so I read several manuals on creative writing; so I’m already aware that ‘one should not write for money’, ’cause it may never come or it passes years and years until it does happen…

I’m sad to start searching for all these published author’s blogs and read about all this commercialism on the world of writing.

Anyway… That’s not why I dropped by in the first place. Emily wrote English is not your first language but you chose to write in English anyway.

That made me feel a bit better, as I have made that decision for myself and you can see from my writing that I’m just on my first steps getting comfortable with english… (still a bit stiff).

I live in an english-speaking for almost 2 years now, so everything pops-up into my mind already partly in English – the other 50% it’s hard work but isn’t all writing?

Can you tell me your first experiences writing in your second language? Or any advice at all?

Thanks for your time.
Vanessa

(And since you wrote your comment, we’ve already seen what other swift and active stance RWA can take: Jane of DA.)

I said already in one of my comments that I really feel bad for Angela James–getting side swiped like this again, going into her new job against a strong headwind of ill feelings on the part of writers toward Harelquin Enterprises as a whole. But then again, I think this is all part and parcel of the bucking changes we are undergoing. If this is Jurassic Park, the part where water ripples in a glass is long past, this is where the T-rex comes charging out of the trees.

(My husband is a techie, and high-tech as an industry is squeezed from all sides and morphing and downsizing constantly. So he is not surprised by an industry in crisis where anything is being tried.)

I think you are quite right in that a few years from now, things maybe beyond what we can imagine. Which was the entire point of my post. That future has suddenly been brought a lot nearer. It doesn’t matter that Harlequin is putting another name on the self-pub venture or what other temporary retreat it will undergo under the current pressure and scrutiny, the future is here and that future does not look pretty at all for those of us who are already in the system.

However, I am glad that the RWA took such a swift and active stance against HarlHo–particularly after the bad blood that cropped up under Diane Pershing’s presidency and the accusations of the RWA being an outdated and outmoded organization. Here’s to hope that this decisive movement will spread to other issues RWA members are dealing with (namely that unnamed publishing house whose advances have dipped below $1000), and that it will urge more romance writers to be more conscientious and proactive with the money they do earn from publication (whether it be advances+royalties or royalties).

One last thing I’m concerned with is how Carina Press will be viewed post-Harlequin Horizons. I think the vanity press partnership has soured the perception of Harlequin for a large portion of the online writing community, and it just may spill over into Harlequin’s e-publishing imprint.