What's a theme anyway?

Since I'm in 'editing' mode, I took an online class to help me out. The first question asked was to define the theme of our book.

Theme.

Well, on the spreadsheet from hell, I thought I had a theme. But it wasn't a theme after all. It was a teaser line.

She thought she was unlovable, he knew he was.

Certainly not a theme. Well, it took me three days to figure it out. Three days! But I finally came up with one. It affects both the hero and the heroine, plus some of the minor characters are also dealing with it.

My muse knew all along what my theme was, but I wish it would have clued me in before I thought for three days. Thinking of theme can give you a headache. I'm not going to tell you the theme. I'd rather you buy the book and figure it out for yourself. I might even run a contest on it.

Metsy Hingle, fantastic writer, beautiful, etc., wrote several books before she discovered that all her books had an underlying theme, something close to her heart.

And looking at my theme, it reflects something that is close to my heart as well. How strange that these elements creep into our work.

Back to the rewriting.

If it's July it must be...

RWA's National Conference time...

Later on this month, two thousand women and thirteen men will be attending the Romance Writers of American annual conference.

This year I'm reducing the stress and not pitching. I have a request for a full and until that gets out the door, I'm not concentranting on much else.

I'm still waiting on two contest results where I am a finalist. One is a couple of months overdue. Interesting. One will announce at the conference.

July in Atlanta. It will be hot and interesting.