Hardcover Heights
Susan Elizabeth Phillips on keeping inspired

By Deborah Pfeiffer

    Susan Elizabeth Phillips' writing accomplishments and successes are what all your friends and family think (and you wish) will happen to you the minute you sell your first manuscript. Phillips, a longtime member of Windy City Romance Writers, does make it look effortless, but anyone who's read and inevitably enjoyed her books knows she's deserved every accolade and best-seller ranking she's received. Still, for someone who's just completed her 15th book, chummed around the New York Times best-sellers list with guys named Stephen and John, won three RITAs and been inducted into the RWA Hall of Fame, what could possibly be the next goal?
    The answer can be found in words of wisdom Phillips is known to share with new and experienced writers alike. No matter how many books you write, she says, it never gets any easier. One of her latest challenges has been seeing her latest book, "This Heart of Mine," released initially in hardcover, an occurrence that might daunt even a proven mass-market best-selling author. But Phillips met this challenge mentally and emotionally prepared, thanks to her friend Jayne Ann Krentz. "She had already brainwashed me, saying that, when you go into hardcover, you should not try to write another type of book. 'Don't change what you do'."
    So while writing "Heart," which concluded the Chicago Stars series, Phillips didn't have unrealistic expectations of having to write a completely different type of book. "I just wrote the best book I could write," she says. "That took the creative pressure off."
    Her strategy seems to have paid off. At the time of this interview, the paperback version of her book had been out a week. "This is the first time I can see the impact of the hardcover edition on the paperback version," she says. "The numbers are looking pretty good." Pretty good, indeed. The paperback version sat comfortably on the New York Times best-seller list for four weeks.
    With "Heart's" release now in paperback, she could be excused for being seduced into number watching on Amazon and various best-seller lists, but Phillips has already moved on to her next challenge--the next book, of course. And in case you're wondering, "Breathing Room," due out in June in hardcover, wasn't any easier to write, she maintains. "With 'Breathing Room,' I slowed the pace down," she says. "The book took me 18 months to write, which is very long for me." Credit some of that slower pace to her living--and writing--in the middle of a house renovation. "With your house being destroyed around you, writing is very difficult."
    But even if she didn't plan on the renovations taking so long, she did deliberately plan to slow her writing pace to some extent. "I haven't been getting the chance for leisure time," she says. More quality time was something she realized she needed to continue growing as a writer, to keep fresh, at this point in her career. "I could never phone a book in," she says. "Anything with my name on it has to be the best work I can make it." At this phase, keeping fresh has come to mean finding ways to creatively nurture herself.
    "That could be little kinds of things, like going to more movies," she explains. "And I'm placing my garden higher on my priority list. I have a strong visual sense, and my garden becomes my palette."
    She readily admits this nurturing approach greatly differs from how she approached writing at the beginning of her career. "How much nurturing of yourself can you do when you have kids?" In her early writing days, she found writing books was enormously compatible with raising children. In fact, her first book was written at a typewriter in her kitchen with a two-year-old playing nearby.
    But now, she and her husband effectively empty nesters, Phillips finds herself more easily diverted, major home renovations notwithstanding. "It's easy to hop up and down from my computer, to find other ways to distract myself," she says, laughing. Obviously, however, she's found ways around the distractions. One way is setting a kitchen timer for 45 minutes and making herself sit down to write. "The first 15 minutes is agony, but once you're past that...." She's also taken to rolling out of bed and writing first thing in the morning until she can't stave off her hunger pangs anymore.
    Changing book settings has been another way she's found to stay fresh. In previous books, including "Heart," her characters were spending a lot of time in Texas and the Midwest. Though she liked writing the Chicago Stars series, she was ready for something different. Much different. Think crossing an ocean and visiting another continent. Phillips and her husband did, taking an eight-day walking tour in Italy's Tuscany region and finding her a completely new setting. "Having the story take place in Tuscany gave it a whole new freshness, new images, new language to work with. It was very invigorating."
    The book-which puts at odds America's diva of selfhelp and Hollywood's favorite villain--has also provided her with other new and exciting challenges. "I'm increasingly interested in other relationships, not just the hero and heroine. 'Breathing Room' follows three couples at a time," she says. "I'm also getting much more interested in theme--what do we want our work to say about us and who we are, what do we want to say."
    This heightened interest in, and awareness of, theme says a lot about how the successful author approaches writing in the context of her life. "I don't do writing goals," she says. "That hasn't worked for me. You sign a contract, those are immediate goals. It's difficult to look down the pike.
    "For me, the goal is truly enjoying life and not losing sight of that-the big picture-and putting my writing in perspective with the rest of my life."
    The recent re-release of the first book she wrote by herself, a historical romance novel titled "Risen Glory," actually helped her find some of that perspective. With the retitled, reissued "Just Imagine," she was given the chance to revise the book, which was "a true '70s bodice ripper," as she calls it. "I loved that. I took out 130 pages that you'd never miss." The experience showed her that she has learned things about writing and become more skillful, making better choices, choosing words more carefully.
    Of course, it also reinforced for her that "the longer I write, the less I think I know about how to do it." A few things about writing she knows for certain, however. "Protect the work" has long been her mantra, and, for her, "writing is just as hard as it was 20 years ago." But even as she acknowledges how hard the process can be, you know she's already at work on her next project--and you're glad. For the inspiration she provides, and for the wonderful books to come.

Deborah Pfeiffer has 16 years of editing and writing experience in the publishing field, much of it on the staff of national and international telecommunications trade magazines. She's making the transition to romance writing, having completed her first single-title romantic comedy and now working on the second.