Author’s Note: Why I Write Romance

Because I’m bored and lonely.

Yeah, I thought this post was going to be some profound thing about why romance is such a big part of my writing, but that’s pretty much the biggest reason.

The better reasons are:

1. I like the idea that even though there are generally no new ideas, every single writer can take the same one and spin it a different way. In terms of how the events happened or just their writing style. None of my writing is particularly new, I am just interested in what I can do with an old idea.

2. Romance is universal. No matter what theme I want to address, every single person can relate to a story about love. Whether it is loss of love, or unrequited love, etc.

I decided to address this question because I scrolled through all of my stories and realized all of them featured a romance in some way.

Author’s Note: Salt

http://figment.com/books/342052-Salt

This is the new story I wrote for a writing challenge on Figment. I’ve been having a lot of trouble with writer’s block as usual. Doing these flash fiction challenged actually helps me just write because I feel like I have a purpose again. It’s really hard to sit down and force myself to think of an idea out of nothing.

There was no real explanation to this particular piece.

I wanted to utilize the imagery of the sea to illustrate their relationship. I wanted to draw the parallel between her pulling herself out of the water at the beginning and her pulling herself away from him at the end.

To me there is still some doubt whether it was a good idea for her to leave him. He is like the tide, he comes and goes, but tides are predictable, you can depend on the tide to come in then recede. I wanted him to be innocent in this piece. He showed up like he can be be expected to show up, but she decided to stop waiting.

The word limit for this challenge was only 150 words, but I think it may be interesting to revisit this couple.