>Goddesses of Love

I can tell I’m close to taking that next step in my writing, going to that next level, when I get restless.

The restlessness comes in the form of discontent with my hero or my heroine or my story structure or my plot or the shallowness of my prose. Something’s not right–not deep enough, not complex enough, not unique enough. I want to intensify the work, but don’t know how, can’t think of something fresh or new or twisted enough to express this need to take my work to a new height.

I spoke in a comment on Edie’s blog (topic: Learning The Craft) about seeking out craft books/articles/blogs that speak to writers on an advanced level, how hearing the same concept in a new voice or from a fresh perspective can shed light on a topic in a way that helps you see it more clearly, understand it more completely.

This is a huge challenge for me, because my brain doesn’t ordinarily function at this depth. I’m a pretty average Joe—average intelligence, average all-American life experience, average middle or upper-middle-class work experience, average family (both immediate and extended).

So, when concepts like those described in The Writer’s Journey by Vogler or The Heroine’s Journey by Murdock start to appeal to me, I know my writing subconscious is stirring.

Here’s an article I ran across along those lines that has me thinking again about going deeper with character and plot than simply character and plot, but evolution and life journeys and archetypes and how all that plays a part in our lives and how it should also play a part in our romance fiction.

Goddesses of Love: How the Romance Genre Has Embraced Feminine Myths and Archetypes, Part 1

Goddesses of Love: How the Romance Genre Has Embraced Feminine Myths and Archetypes, Part 2

Is this phenomenon a foreign concept to you or do you also get an inkling of when it’s time to step up your writing? How do you know? What do you do?