I’ve removed a heap of scenes from Love And Distraction and added some others, in response to Ally Blake’s feedback, which was great and on point. Unfortunately, I don’t like the resulting book. I’ve gone off it, and I wonder if romance is the right genre for me, and I wonder if I should even be writing at all.
I’ve hit the doubtful doldrums. Each word I write feels clumsy and each sentence I write feels trite. I thought I was immune to writer’s block, but here it is in full effect. I stopped writing completely for 10 days, but that didn’t improve things. It just made me feel sad and empty.
So I’ve started writing morning pages and that is helping. 500+ stream of consciousness words. I’ve got faith that I will get back to the novel and that it will be finished. I’m not convinced anymore that it will be a typical romance now – but the love story will remain central and it does abide by romance genre conventions still.
Perhaps if it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it is still a romance.
Photo by George Hoza on Unsplash
