Adjectives of Love

Tonight, I’m having quite a few thoughts after reading through and making edits my third time around. Editing and rewrites are undoubtedly the most tedious part of writing a book. By the time you’re done reading and rereading, you can almost recite it word for word.It's strange too how you can see things differently each time, especially when you review your choice of words to describe a person's anguish or heated desire.

As I've stated before, this book is emotional. I don't know how else to describe it, except that the pages are teeming with emotions that I have agonized over for hours and tried to express. My tagline of, "penning heartfelt emotional journeys" is really being put to the test this time around. Some of the questions I've had to think about through this process are:

• What do women feel inside when they are love?
• What do men feel inside when they are in love?
• Do men really love like women do, or are their emotions different?
• What effect does the loss of love have upon a man?
• What lengths will a man go to search for love?
• What lengths will a man go to fight for or keep someone they love?

I’ve thought about the answers to those questions and then tried to put them into the text. Yet, there are times I honestly feel that all of my words used to describe love, adoration, affection, longing, and a host of other endearing descriptions of agape just aren't enough.

I'm going to make a stark confession penning this post, that I do not know what it means to be truly loved by a man who felt desperation of soul. In fact, as a woman, historically I've struck out big time in the romance area. As a writer, who is supposed to write what they know, I can assure you I've never had a Robert Holland in my life (except my uncle and grandfather, and great uncle who bore that name)—they don’t count in the area of romance.

What I'm trying to say is that I've never had that type of a man that Robert Holland has become as a character—desperate for a woman he let go, desperate to win her back, and desperate to spend eternity at her side. I look at him and think, "Who are you?" Well, he's a figment of my imagination, frankly. He's the man in a romance novel created for my readers. Unfortunately, ladies, he's not real.

Romance books are, of course, the number one selling genre for women. Even women in relationships, dating or married, are prone to stuffing a good six-pack ab or bare thigh bulging-breast woman into their purse in paperback or Kindle form. It's the dream of what we'd like men to be like, not necessarily what they are like. We're in love with love, and in love with the men we create as characters.

Frankly, I've never met a man like Robert Holland begging to hear that I still love him, and I probably never will. Writing and reading in many ways is a therapeutic fantasy we retreat into so we can find solace for those areas in our life that are not quite the perfection we think they should be. It makes up for the losses of never having experienced a man's love.

In conclusion, I’m facing a huge challenge in this book. Namely, to find the right words that will make my readers feel desperation of soul and the myriad of other emotions flowing through the hearts of my characters. It's a tall challenge, and I just hope that I deliver.