From confidence to ::uses the thesaurus to look up an antonym because I'm not even a writer anymore::

Today I feel a bit down on myself. 

I was writing, hit a mild case of writers block, and decided to go ahead and take every writer's advice.

Read. 

I found a Tumblr post that said they were interested in faked romance, and I love a good "let's pretend we're together" story, so I bought: Yours to Keep, by Shannon Stacey 

It had the typical "pretend we're engaged and live with me plot line," but I just kept thinking, she's so great at conversation and giving real life to her characters. I also really enjoyed the relationship between Emma and Sean. They had really nice personalities. I hadn't read any of her other books, but this one was fine enough as a stand alone.

While reading, I noticed a few things I'm struggling with as a writer:

  • My character spends a lot of time in her head. Maybe this is because I chose to write in first person. Any of the other short stories I've written have been in third person. When I was in creative writing course in college, my professor said first time authors tend to write in first person because it's a bit easier. I'm not so sure I like it.

  • Conversations seem weird to me. What the heck are my characters going to talk about? Their lives I guess. I'm going to try listening to what the people around me are talking about. Usually it's other people, but I get caught up in having too many other characters in my stories. Your's to Keep has an unreal amount of characters, but Shannon Stacey had been building that huge family for three books now. 

What I wrote about yesterday and my resolve: 

I tried my hand at my first sex scene. It was forced for sure. One of the things I noticed in the advice pages was that good romance writers should like what they read and read often. I was like yeah! I do that! But, after writing 20 pages, its time to go back to reading a bit. My new plan is to go back and read some of the books that got me hooked on the genre. Luckily the sun is shinning and I'm a teacher, so I've got the whole day to sit in my lawn chair and read- I mean study. ;)

What's a romance novel you'd always go back to re-read?

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