Happy April Fool’s Day! And a very merry unbirthday to me! My actual birthday is in August, but as a young girl, it grieved me that I had a summer birthday when none of my school friends were really around to celebrate. My mother’s solution was to designate April 1^st as my unbirthday thus allowing me to have a party during the school year at which I would inevitably receive an empty present or one filled with rocks as an April Fool’s joke.

Cute kids, huh.

Few things are more foolish than the Mad Hatter and his crazed tea party, the origin of the unbirthday status and song (though I maintain that his creator, Lewis Carroll, was a shade too creepy a guy, always excepting his excellent taste for Christ Church, Oxford University). We’re all fools in life at one point or another. Often being foolish is how we relax, unwind, or celebrate; sometimes it’s also how we learn.

In literature, the role of the fool is often an avatar for much wisdom; the voice of reason couched in a frame of ridiculous. The Grand Master himself, Shakespeare, makes best use of his fools in this way, often covering the actual fool in the patina of wisdom personified either by age or stature. I thought particularly of Shakespeare’s Lear this past week as Sir Ian McKellen immortally brought his performance to the small screen via PBS. Lear conveys the epitome of foolishness when he seeks to barter his kingdom for his daughters’ love. His youngest daughter, Cordelia’s, response illuminates the lack of wisdom in her father’s actions as she refuses to quantify her love. “Unhappy as I am, I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your majesty according to my bond; nor more, nor less.” Lear counters further on, “So young, and so untender?” Cordelia responds, “So young, my lord, and true.”

Cordelia’s one of the original romantic heroines to my mind, forsaking the easy road to stay true to herself and to her own notions of love and loyalty. Mind you, she’s killed in the end, but at least she caught her prince first. Priorities.

I would wager that we all know the sensation of heaving our hearts into our mouths whether in fear, grief, or when surprised by joy. No doubt we’ve all offered our hearts to lovers at one time or another or felt them drop, or even stop, with attraction or desire. Surely we have all been fools for love.

And if we haven’t, well by Jove, sure our heroines certainly have. For surely that is one of the greatest pleasures in being an author of romantic fiction, to allow our heroines to plunge through the heights and depths of romantic emotion that we too have experienced, or that we hope may someday cross our paths. We’re automatically foolish by profession because we willingly enter into play within a world of fully realized locations and people as real to us as our own families. Indeed, we are compelled by our creative writing natures to do so.

To be an author is to be a kind of ridiculous fool and to impart much wisdom by being so. As writers, we can be foolish in creating historical romances and explore the complexities of Medieval or Regency gender roles. We can be foolish in writing western adventures and revisit the untamed passion, raw courage, and fierce uncertainty of the American frontier. We can be foolish in word building paranormals and wonder at social hierarchies amongst demons, werewolves, and vampires. We can be foolish in “chick lit” with the single girl in the city looking for love and discover the burdens and identity issues facing young professional women of today. We can be foolish in mature romance and reveal the beauty of second chances.

All wisdom revealed from our foolish play.

Good news! We can also be foolish in the myriad ways our heroines (and heroes!) achieve their final happy endings.

Where’s the fun without that?

So I say to all like-minded fools out there – enjoy your special day.

Kiersten Hallie Krum is a pre-published writer of romantic suspense fiction who is often foolish for many things. During the daylight hours, her secret identity works as a pharmaceutical advertising editor and a back cover copy writer of romantic fiction. She anxiously awaits the right agent/editor to make her dreams come true. Read more of Kiersten’s thoughts on writing and the world around her at www.twolftshoes.blogspot.com

Mining Ideas from the Strangest of Places

Whenever one reveals oneself to others as a writer, inevitably the question arises: Where do you get your ideas?

Me? From lying to other people.

This is how my first manuscript began.

I was part of a women’s choir at my undergraduate college. One year we kicked off the new school year with a retreat weekend. The Friday night games were to begin with an icebreaker designed to introduce the old and new members to one another.

This involved pre-retreat prep. We were to write down one thing about ourselves that wasn’t well known and turn that item in to the choir president (Melody – no pun intended) prior to the weekend. Melody made a list of all these traits and passed it out sans names. We were then to go around the room asking only one question of each person until we could match up every item on the list to its owner.

I could not think of a single applicable trait. There were things that no one knew about me, but that was deliberate. All safe options failed to seem pithy enough for submission. Frustrated with my delay, Melody finally ordered me to make one up.

On the night in question, I avoided the whole matter by hiding in the kitchen helping Melody cook an Italian dinner that had ended up being delayed and overly involved. (Quick tip: never deny promised food to a group of hungry women. Not. Pretty.) We cooked and sweated and laughed a lot that night, no small bit of which was Melody needling me about my fib. This inevitably bit us in the butt when our friend and fellow kitchen helper, Heidi, posed a genuine question.

What exactly had I written down?

Melody was no help, suspiciously hiding her face in the fumes of a saucepot, and I finally had to admit that I had spent the previous summer hitch-hiking cross-country, hanging out with various bikers and truckers along the way. In the fall of 1991, as a conservatively raised 19-year-old sophomore (oh, so long ago), anyone who knew me would know that this was a patently absurd notion. Melody (who did know me) snorted from her position at the stove. Heidi, always ready to believe the best of people, took my blatant fiction as truth.

“Wow,” she said. “I bet you met a lot of really interesting people.” I remember pausing to check that she was serious. How could she not know I was making it up? When I realized that she was indeed sincere, I had a quick second to decide whether to confess my creative license or just go with it.

I went with it.

Me: Yeah, I did. There are real people underneath all that leather and tattoos. It really taught me not to judge a book by its cover. (I kid you not the “book…cover” cliché is a direct quote.)

Heidi: I can totally see that.

At this point, Melody stuck a plate in Heidi’s hands and sent her out of the kitchen.

Melody (to me): You are very bad.

Me: I can’t believe she bought that.

Melody: Are you going to tell her the truth?

Me: Where’s the fun in that?

Melody: You are going to hell.

Thing is, the more I thought on it, the better an idea it became for a short story. But since I never wrote anything short in my life it wound up being more of a novella. I submitted it to the literary magazine at school and they rejected it (my first rejection!) as they should because it was terrible. But I kept at it – mostly when I should have been studying – and it evolved into a novel and about ten years later I finally finished it.

It was still terrible.

Now I’ve returned to that first, earnest manuscript to reshape and redevelop it into a viable story. My 1991 self may be long gone but that initial idea is still valid and has served as a starting point for characters whose stories still plague me to tell. I also feel a faint wobbly obligation to Heidi to make something real from her naïve belief in my deception. It helps that today’s me writes better than my younger incarnation, though I have become, over the years, much better at lying. Which is bad; lying is bad, BAD I say.

Ahem.

Ideas can come from all kinds of different places. I can’t always rely on a handy icebreaker to clue me in, so I keep a folder of interesting news items that strike a chord with me. Reading wedding announcements and obits can offer good hooks, too as I’ve only recently learned. I look around at my world and mine ideas from it. The eccentric admin at work, the woman trudging up a short driveway with a large, blue, overfilled cloth bag hooked over her shoulder that I drove past on the way to work, that absurd trip to buy a Christmas tree; all those things that you just can’t make up. Make something up from them instead. Keep a notebook in your purse or pocket and jot down the things or events that linger. Life offers all kinds of launching points for writers.

Dive on in.

By the way – something not too many people know about me?

I alphabetize my cash money.

Kiersten Hallie Krum is a pre-published writer of romantic suspense fiction. During the daylight hours, her secret identity works as a pharmaceutical advertising editor and a back cover copy writer of romantic fiction. She anxiously awaits the right agent/editor to make her dreams come true. Read more of Kiersten’s thoughts on writing and the world around her at www.twolftshoes.blogspot.com.