On Writing About Family & Relationships

Not that this isn't a quay for others, it just happens to be my Quay too. I come from a large family. On both sides and all sides up into the great-grandparents lots of children were born. They had lots of children, and the children had lots of children, and finally along came birth control, followed by distilling into the conscience that it was better to wait...complete college...land a job, or career...and then after some success had been attained, to start shopping around...ugh...to extend the family.

From this visage it comes as second nature to write about family and relationships. It's a little more than simply coming from a large family, but growing up loving the fact that I had so many cousins, and aunts, and uncles, and grandparents. How many of us have to find five and six names to title our grandparents so that we can distinguish which one we're talking about? How many of us have so many aunts and uncles that some of them are more like our cousins being around the same age? I won’t even dare go into the soliloquy again, recounting that conversation with my father when I was four, foreseeing this would be my calling, but will say it's what made writing my romance series a captivating breeze.

And thus with all of that, here are my TEN TOPs 

on how I've come to handle writing about family & relationships.

* I've come to believe that families are the bond that holds societies together. Without 'familial' structures, societies stop working.

* I used to tease all the time about how once my kids left the nest I was changing the locks and heading for the white beaches of the most secluded island and kicking up my heels with a Cosmo in each hand. It was all show off talk. I bawled like a newborn baby when my babies, who just so happen at the same time, left for college.

* Managing families requires much compromising. Much! Where I got to learn it's not all about me, and what I want, desire and deserve.

* Infidelity in a marriage is not an instant signal of imminent dissolution of the marriage...well, no more than one or the other gaining weight from sneaking in extra calories, suffering an inexorable health crisis, or a like ill-timed change in circumstances.

* Marriage and family are like jobs and careers. It can be very rewarding, fulfilling and fun, while at the same time, work...work...work! And here’s the real similarity. Each time you cut out on one or the other, you've got to start over, going through the same minutia as before. In short, we need them both.

* I must admit, I didn't enjoy my youth (the tween stage before reinventing myself;-) as much as I enjoyed growing up with my children.

* I find family fascinating.

* I, likewise, realize when this fulfilling sentiment is not the main vein running through a family, the family portrait can end up looking not so great. But then that's another beauty. No one is tied from creating and maintaining and growing their own family.

* In Leiatra's Rhapsody (and yeah, I know it's a novel, but I'm speaking from experience here too), she started from an only child...and look at what she grew!

* I Love Family...and yes, we may be singing offbeat, not in unison, and one pitch higher and better, or worse than the other...but at least we're singing from the same sheet of music.