It's Feels Like Losing a Loved One...

To explain my dilemma I have to go back to when I began to write my first novel. At first, I only wrote about a chapter and a half and then forgot about it. Now my main genre is Erotica. And when I started reading when I was a young girl, my first love was historical romances. Later, I started reading contemporary romances. But after reading Fifty Shades of Grey, I fell head over heels for erotica. I can't even tell you how many of them I bought on my Nook. I seriously binge read as much as I could. I've always been a sexually open person. Sharing and discussing experiences with the people I'm around. So a genre that caters to women that are or want to be open and honest about their sexuality and basking in it, was right up my alley.

So right in the middle of reading an erotic novel, my characters that I had started writing months before, literally starting shouting at me to finish their story. It got to the point that I couldn't even concentrate on what I was reading. I would read a whole page and had no idea what I'd just read. So I put down my Nook and picked up my laptop and haven't looked back since.

But there's only one problem with this path to self-discovery and finding that I love writing...I can no longer read the genre that I love! Oh the horror!!!

Either I start reading something and my own characters won't get out of my head. Or I start comparing my writing to that author's technique. Or fear of their ideas planting themselves subconsciously into my brain, scares me to death. And the last thing I want is for someone to claim that I plagiarized their work. Trust me, I've seen that kind of drama and accusations flying on social media and I want no part of it.

I mean, I can't even read the sequels to series that I started to read before I even began writing. Ugh! Maybe one day...

The only books that I've been able to read since I started this journey is the Outlander series. So it looks like if I want to absorb myself in a book, which isn't all that often anymore (sigh...), I have to go back to my first love...historical romances.

For all you authors out there that can still read and write at the same time...Kudos to you!!!

'Til next time...