The LL&L Rumpus Room

I suck at writing romances. Mainly because I have no firsthand experience at actual romance. Infatuation, I could write pages of, but romance - nuh-uh.

I've written a couple of romances. Not too many. Come to think of it, I have written considerably less romances then I have friendships and parent/child relationships into a novel.

First, between my leading lady (who had my name) and the mysterious character from the future called Ryen, who turned out to be her son from the future, and his own father. (I was fifteen when I wrote that, so cut me a sliver of slack.)

Then there are Lynn and Michal. I liked them. She was destined to die, and he was sort of like a historian, destined to write it down. It was a love doomed from the very beginning, and I totally dug it. (And so did the few people who read the novel.) I especially loved writing the last scene, where he discovers her dead on the hilltop. I think I may have had bad dreams after I wrote that, I'm not sure.

Um, let's see: my current novel has something of a romance, but it isn't explored much - it's more like a brother/sister kind of friendship that could become a romance. I'm still in the rewriting phase (and I can still tell myself that after 1,5 years without feeling too much of a fraud) so if I fall in love in the meantime, I might turn it into a romance.

As for realism... what's the fun in realism? In real life, you have to argue over who has to cook and who cleans up whose mess, and on which side of the bed you sleep. If I get to decide how the romance is going to work, I'm definitely not going to get real.

As for the worst romance I've ever read... I don't think I've ever read a really bad romance. Most bad romances are bad because they appear in absolutely horrible books. And I try to stay away from really aweful writing.

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Why should I leave this green-floored cell
Roofed with blue air in which we dwell,
Unless outside its guarded gates,
Long, long desired, the Unearthly waits
Strangeness that moves us more than fear,
Beauty that stabs with tingling spear,
Or Wonder, laying on one's heart
That finger-tip at which we start
As if some thought too swift and shy
For reason's grasp had just gone by?
C.S. Lewis

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