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Sometimes, you have to give a little in order to get something. I’m not talking about dealing with co-workers or selling something. What I’m talking about is writing. Every genre has it’s problems when it comes to writing. For me, the paranormal part is easy. Making up immortal creatures, describing vampires, all pretty ’snap’ most days. Writing romance is difficult. I’m sure some writers never struggle over that part. I do, and I don’t. But mostly, I do, because I have to give something of myself in order to end up with a scene that brings tears to your eyes.

When I was in my twenties and I was writing song lyrics, Sally, my friend and guitarist, called me The Word Girl. If something didn’t fit the music, give me a few minutes and I’d tweak the lyrics so that they did. I wrote an entire novel, a contemporary romance, called Note By Note, in long hand. *shudder* Scary, huh? My friends that read it loved it! Back then, it was all about the mechanics of writing, following my plot, fleshing out the characters, picking and choosing the right words and tenses. At that point in my life, the romance part wasn’t my focus. I wrote it and it came out pretty good, but from what I remember of it (those notebooks have long since been lost), it was missing the spark that some of my more recent scribbles have.

Writing romance now means that I have to take myself mentally to an emotional place. This is a link to the story I started about McKenna and the male model - A Heart To Match. This part explains how McKenna comes to reach out to the model by posting a comment on his blog. What drives her to reach out to him is the all encompassing feeling of being alone. There’s no words of love in this part of the story, no mushy stuff. It’s about McKenna pouring her feelings into her blog post, and the model’s reaction when he reads it.

To write that piece, I had to take myself back to a time and place I don’t like to remember. But the overwhelming emotions I felt then, make it easy to explain how McKenna feels. I’ve almost literally been in her shoes. It’s a funny thing, to learn so much about yourself and how emotions work, when you realize that there is no one left in your life who loves you.

Fortunately, for me, that period of my life didn’t last too long. The PITA came along and saved me from sinking into an abyss of despair. *rolls eyes* I’m ruthless though. I use those memories as fuel for when I have to write the “mushy stuff”. Lex and Tarren from the Bar are two characters that are infused with my own personal emotion. It’s probably why I refuse to let them go, even though they’ve had their HEAs. Opalgirl is the master of feisty women characters. Me, I’m the master of broken and heartbroken characters. I have a string of them in the Bar. Lex, Tarren, Tait, Bianca, Jensen, Carlisle, Fayne… Even some of my male characters have had their hearts broken in the past: Dominic, Christian, Sebastien, Rune, St. James, and Matt.

I don’t mind giving of myself in order for my characters to come to life. When Tait sings about a man who hates her, when Jensen weeps in front of the mirror, feeling that she’s old and no man will want her, when Bianca thinks that the man she loves has betrayed her, when Carlisle lies in the snow that covers her murdered son’s grave, when Fayne feels that she’s too insignificant for the man she loves to ever notice her, and when Lex gives her own life so that the man she loves can be free of his past and have a happy future… all of those moments were brought to the reader through the auspices of my own pain and loss.

Using those feelings to fuel the words I type is better, and cheaper, than a shrink. I wonder sometimes why so many people I know take anti-anxiety or anti-depression meds. I still have times when I’m overwhelmed and depression sets in. However, overall, I’m resilient and I bounce back, if not to dewy eyed optimism at least to an acceptance of things I have no control over and can’t change. I’d like to think that even without the writing I wouldn’t need all those pills that others take. I don’t know for sure though. I have some pretty fucked up moments inside my head. I can’t see how meds could cure me of them. I mean, you’d have to rid me of my entire thought process, and for some reason, I just don’t see a lobotomy helping my writing any.

No matter how much I give of myself to my characters, there always seems to be more to call upon. I’m not quite sure why that well hasn’t dried up. It just hasn’t. I guess the bottom line is that I refuse to be lost. Instead, I keep giving of myself to fuel Lex and now McKenna. So take a gander at my newest heroine. She brought me to tears tonight so I really hope you like her and the direction I’m taking with A Heart to Match!