It, my book, started out fine. Things were flowing according to my master  outline and I kept writing and writing.   Then my main characters start falling in love. Dammit! Romance always gets me off topic, ignoring the Big Picture.

This happens in almost all of my fiction. Both novels and short stories. When I was a kid (I started writing when I was in grade-school), I wrote what I called ‘corny’ stories. Oh Lord, were they ever mushy girl stuff! Very fun to write, but the only person interested in reading them was me and my BFF who also loved to write mushy, corny stories that I enjoyed reading.

My mom would nag us to go outside and play. She thought we were very strange little girls who wanted to sit indoors at the kitchen table and write, when it was summer break and we were in sunny California.

Writing good love scenes requires imagination and a sense of fun. The amount of boyfriends or experience you’ve acquired, won’t help you write romance better. Unless you are going for the hot steamy details.

BFF and I were 11-year old girls, yet our love scenes were very tender and romantic. We didn’t need pornish* details. We were only interested in the romance. As we wrote about their first touch or their first kiss, we played out the scene in our heads, trying to feel what they were feeling.

Although we spent most of our time plotting romance, these stories were not “Romances” in the Harlequin sense. They were mysteries, thrillers, history and comedy all rolled up in one story or in separate stories.

When I return to work on my current book I should put the romance on the back burner and keep up with my research and the main story line. To stay on track with this project. I really, really want to do that!

Then again, I need a lot of romance in my life to stay happy. 😉

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*Pornish [poor-nish]; adverb. When something has too much erotic detail.
– taken from the “Words That Should Exist Dictionary“