Columns: Tag – Love
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Writing Quips and Tips
The new wave of erotic fiction
Erotic fiction is experiencing a new wave of popularity – and, it seems a new level of respectability.
Collections of erotic fiction are suddenly everywhere. And people are no longer ashamed of enjoying it. The ‘90s, it seems, was the decade of chick lit, while the noughties have apparently been well named.
Luke's World
All about love, and hate and fear and ………
I love the idea of relationships, hate the notion of suburbia, and fear the death of my independence
Writing Quips and Tips
Does great love still exist?
At the start of the 21st century, has romance grown tame?
“For most of us love is largely a matter of shared mortgage payments, evenings curled up on the couch in front of a video, or maybe a night in a hotel for an anniversary,” writes Katie Roiphe in the New York Times.”
Writing Quips and Tips
Writing Sex (and how it can change your life)
7am – 1pm: Sex
2pm: Emails and admin.There’ve been a number of days when my diary has looked like this. Let nobody tell you writers don’t have a tough life.
If some future archaeologist excavates my diaries, he’ll write: “The ancients were an insatiable people …”
Writing Quips and Tips
What women want
Erotic fiction is experiencing a new wave of popularity – and, it seems a new level of respectability.
Collections of erotic fiction are suddenly everywhere. And people are no longer ashamed of enjoying it. The ‘90s, it seems, was the decade of chick lit, while the noughties have apparently been well named.
Luke's World
Love muscles in
So if dating is like going to gym then I am at back on the treadmill after a winter of idleness.
Writing Quips and Tips
Journals for Writers
Oh, I know you kept a diary when you were fourteen.
Your awful brother probably picked the lock and read steamy passages to his friends. But even so … a journal kept properly can help your writing in many ways. A journal is a safe place to expose yourself, explore your own responses and to be vulnerable and honest. No-one will see it and no-one can judge you on it.
My mother once told me that I shouldn’t use my diary for teenage venting. “What happens if someone publishes it when you’re dead, like Anne Frank.”
But I believe that’s quite the wrong way of looking at a journal. Don’t imagine an audience – it makes you self-conscious. You can demand that all your journals be burnt upon your death. Or write as illegibly as I do – then no-one will ever decipher a word.
Writing Quips and Tips
Romance – Lesbian vs Straight
Life is a story.We tell stories, not just to entertain and to escape, but as a rehearsal for life. How would we handle this or that? How would we face the trials of our hero or heroine?
Romance novels should provide us with the characters and situations that we can, and choose to, identify with. Lesbian Romance gives gay women the kind of love stories they can be drawn into – that provide them with a “rehearsal for life” in the love stakes.
Characters on the Couch
Older love
The lead character in my (still embryonic) novel is an older woman, of a certain age (ok she’s 60) who is still looking for Mr Right.