“If you feel somebody trying to put you on, you really feel it.”

… That’s the way I feel about my writing.

Are you ever reading along, not really enjoying a book, but reading it because you paid for it, or have time invested in it, and you come across a passage that simply doesn’t say anything? I suppose we all have. I may even have been guilty of writing some of those in my earlier work… back in the day when I was writing to the infamous ‘guidelines’ that were set out by the small handful of romance publishers who would look at manuscripts from people like me … people who weren’t big names in the business.

And then I was set free. Free to write from the heart, to use an overworked expression. It may be overworked, but it’s what makes writing worthwhile for me. I’ve learned to write from the heart recently. I put my characters in real-life situations and have them talk in a way that sounds honest, not the contrived romance-speak that was popular for so many years. It’s liberating, it’s fun, and my readers tell me it makes for a darned good read.

I think Leonard Cohen gets it more than anyone, with his gritty, honest song lyrics. If you’d like to read a great article from Rolling Stone, here’s the link. Happy reading, and happy listening.