Football, Romance, and What the Heck to Write

As I mentioned previously, I live in Baltimore. This town is football crazy. People wear purple on a daily basis, and all the nurses at a blood drive were wearing fake Joe Flacco mustaches. It is disconcerting to have a woman with an oversized fu manchu stache stick a needle in your arm. All this fan nuttiness is due to the big, make it or skip the Superbowl game this weekend.

But I have to admit that football just doesn't do it for me. I'm not a sports fan. In the interest of full disclosure, I'll be at the symphone during the game on Sunday.  However, it is clear there are many, many romance readers out there who are HUGE sports fans. Deirdre Martin, Carly Phillips, Kate Angell, Lori Foster, Susan Mallery, and of course Susan Elizabeth Phillips all have entire series based around athletes. Harelquin Blaze puts out several, in addition to their Nascar line of books. If you aren't writing about vampires, then sports is the next big trend.

So I tried a few months ago to give it serious thought. I watched the punts, the tackles, the women hugging in sympathy/horror/excitement in the stands, and I tried to wrap my brain around an idea - any germ of an idea.  Not to be a sell out and write to a trend (very dangerous, because who knows when a trend will disappear?).  But because if that many readers enjoy it, maybe it is worth trying.  I certainly want readers to enjoy my books!

But the more I thought about it, the more I had to fall back on the backbone of writing; passion. The only way I'm going to willingly forego watching Castle  or Greys Anatomy every week in order to churn out my word count is if I'm motivated by passion. And I simply don't feel passionate about sports. I think if I put my mind to it, sure I could come up with a plot and a brief outline about a baseball player. But after the excitement of the first few chapters, my interest would wane, I wouldn't care about the characters, and my book simply wouldn't get written. So I guess that means I'm going to keep pushing the envelope and writing what I care about instead of what is guaranteed to sell. Hopefully, eventually, my passion will blaze across the pages and convince someone love happens everywhere - trendy or not.