When you think of romance novels, I’m sure the first thing that comes to mind is two (or more, I’m not judging. My latest novel is about a woman falling in love with three guys). Usually, though not always, these characters falling in love involves a romance relationship. So how do real life romantic relationships affect writing romance?
Truthfully, I don’t have a ton of experience with this, but I do have a story. Once upon a time, I was dating a guy while I was very obsessive about my deadlines and working on a bunch of projects. And for those of you that know me, no, this was not last week. And even though I didn’t think that it would, I definitely noticed that my writing and my attitude towards it was affected by my relationship, through no fault of anyone involved. It was just simply that I had another thing to prioritize in my life, and that meant I had less time for my writing.
A couple months into my relationship, I wasn’t writing nearly as much as I was before we started dating, and there’s a couple reasons for that. One, I was spending a lot of time with my partner when I wasn’t at work, so I had a lot less time to write. Two, I felt really weird writing while I was dating him. I got really in my head about what I was writing, because I was worried that people reading it would think that I was basing it off of something that had actually happened, and I didn’t want to include too many details about my real relationship, because I was worried that my partner wouldn’t be comfortable with that. And I wasn’t even sure how much of that I was comfortable sharing. As a result, I didn’t have a good mindset around my writing, and I stopped enjoying it as much as I used to.
Honestly, losing my writing as much as I did made me really sad, both when I was with my partner, and after we had broken up. It felt like I was losing myself, and that terrified me. But at the same time, I wasn’t enjoying writing because I was second guessing myself, so I didn’t want to force myself to write something I wasn’t happy with. Getting my writing back, both after my partner and I broke up, and after I was sick, was one of the best feelings. I’ve described it as a hug, and feeling like I’ve come home after being away for a while.
All of this is really sad, so I’m going to make it worse. Writing romance through heartbreak is also really challenging. You want your characters to be happy, but you’re actively writing about something you just lost. And, like I talked about a few weeks ago, if your character is even remotely inspired by the person you just lost, writing with that character feels really weird. Do you stop writing with that character because of the ties they have and rewrite your project? Or do you keep writing with them, and be constantly reminded of someone that hurt you? Truthfully, there isn’t a right answer here, at least for me. I think it really depends on the situation. And if you’re me, you’re going to write an ex boyfriend character that totally sucks, just to relish in the fact that someone’s ex is getting hated on, because who doesn’t like hating on a crappy ex boyfriend character?
What I have learned regarding this is that I need to continue to prioritize writing, and writing for me when I’m in a relationship. Writing the projects that I want to, with the content that I want, and not being worried about what other people are going to think about it. And if nothing else, my writing makes me feel like a whole person, and that’s incredibly important for any relationship to succeed.
That's all for now, folks!
-C
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