I finished STAY almost two years ago, and in the middle of writing my next book, I lost the love. Some call it burnout, but I write romance, so lost love is more accurate.

It’s not that I couldn’t write; I was still capable. I just didn’t want to. I wasn’t excited to sit down or scribbling notes to myself. Nothing.

But I’m a writer, and writers must write, right? So, I fumbled along to my next book and wrote a shell of a manuscript. I would say it was bad, but it wasn’t even interesting enough to be bad.

After a few weeks of thank-god-that’s-over, my wonderful editor sent me the notes I knew were coming. I normally love notes. I plow through them, cleaning things up and expanding the story. Not this time.

It’s not that her notes weren’t constructive, kind, and helpful. They were, but I was gone. I’d lost the love for writing, which had never happened before. It was my first lost love. I didn’t know what to do, so I just walked away.

There were a few months I told myself I was better off. I’d written all I had in me, and there were other more important things I should be doing with my life. Important reading, intellectual stuff I should be intellectualizing about.The world is burning after all, who needs me babbling on about couples falling in love.

I closed my laptop, read a lot of depressing books, some yard work, and not much else. I stayed off social media and struggled to give myself grace amid nothingness. I slept more and walked more, and months passed until I heard a character’s voice.

It was initially annoying, like something I’d left behind and didn’t want to revisit.

A few days later, I heard another voice and then another one. My creative mind was silent for so long, I thought for sure all the characters had packed up and moved out, and given up on me, but days and weeks went by, and there they were bantering away in my head like long-lost friends who refused to listen when I told them to, “Please, go away!”

At their incessant chatter, I opened my laptop and wrote out the scene with little regard for structure or sense. I just wrote. My muscles were sore, and I was skeptical I had more than a paragraph in me. Maybe this was just leftover from the love I’d left behind.

I showed up the next day, and the next until one day, I realized I had butterflies. I had ideas, lots of ideas.

It’s been a scary time. Writing is all I know how to do, and I’m officially too old to be an FBI field agent.

So, long story to say I’m in love again, and as with all the best love stories, I know myself better this time. There will be no more hoping this one lasts. Nope, this time I will take care of me so I can be a better writer, a better lover.

That’s all from the laundry room. Goodnight Kiss.

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