No matter what your profession is, it's good to scare yourself a little from time to time! It's crucial to keep challenging yourself and to learn from people who are more accomplished than you are.
Lisa Kleypas
Love is always a leap into the unknown. You can try to control as many variables, and understand a situation as you can, but you're still jumping off a cliff and hoping that someone catches you.
Before I write the first page of a novel, I spend a long time creating detailed backgrounds for my characters. I imagine the experiences that have formed them, what makes them happy, angry, fearful, and what they yearn for.
The way glass can be molded or blown or cut into any kind of shape made me think about how we as people - our characters or souls - can be shaped or changed by outside influences.
I'd gone to Wellesley College, an amazing women's college where the students were encouraged to follow our dreams. However, after I graduated and had a historical romance published, more than a few people indicated that, in some way, my career choice was a 'waste' of so much education.
I will admit, I once launched myself at Julie Garwood for a hug, hoping some of her magic would rub off on me... and I have fangirl crushes on Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Linda Howard, and Kresley Cole, among many others.
My ultimate crush may be Judith McNaught - I met her once more than 20 years ago, and she was incredibly kind and encouraging to me. I adore that woman. But I also fangirl over aspiring or beginning authors, because every time I talk with them, I'm so energized and inspired.
This is not Tolstoy. I don't want to know what critics and professors think of what I'm writing. It might hurt my feelings.
I always counsel aspiring novelists that passion is the most important quality for a writer to possess - technique can be taught, but that relentless desire to write has to come from within.
It's difficult for most of us to be completely honest with ourselves - we hate to admit how vulnerable or needful we are.
I grew up being very shy, very much a bookworm, and I remember desperately wondering how to be accepted by the popular kids.
I have always been an obsessive reader - I remember going back and forth to the local library with stacks of books taller than I was.
We all know that being able to express deep emotion can literally save a person's life, and suppressing emotion can kill you both spiritually and physically.
When something terrible happens, how you react determines who you are from then on.
