Serena Chase over at Edgy Inspirational Romance tagged me in her blog hop about the Writing Process so here I am, writing about writing!

I did one of these recently but what the heck, let’s do it again.

Here’s how it works: the blog hop proposes questions and I answer them.

Fair enough? Okay, let’s go.

Q: What am I writing right now?

A: Technically, this blog but no one likes a smart aleck so I’ll say I just finished the rewrite on How To Catch A Prince, the third book in the Royal Wedding Series and am about to start a new novel called The Wedding Chapel.

Look for How To Catch A Prince in February 2015!

Q: How does your work differ from others in your genre?

A: Wow, great question. I’m not really sure other than I typically have a little bit more going on than just the romance though that is key. I also have a strong family dynamic and a supernatural element. I like to “show” how God works in our lives with a physical manifestation or object.

I use a lot of dialog to build tension.

My heroines always have a career. I use that as a way to add tension.

Q: Why do I write what I write?

A: I’m assuming this means “why do I write romance?” I don’t know other than I love a good romantic story, the hope and joy of love and commitment. I’m such a Pollyanna.

I also felt it was important as an author starting out to pick a genre and stick with it. Romance is the number one genre and since I gravitated toward romantic books and movies anyway, I decided to commit to writing it.

I write trade romance (long books) because I don’t have to follow all of the genre rules. I like to layer in extra story lines or emotional hooks. Or like with the royal books, I added a lot of made up history that mirrored the real history of early 20th century Europe.

Q: How does your writing process work?

A: An inspired, great idea, lots of musing and thinking, pondering, research, making random statements to my husband without any preamble so he has no idea what I’m talking about, planning, using my plot and character tools to hack out a story idea, phone call with my writing partner Susan May Warren, more character and plot work, a bit of angst, burst of inspiration, writing a synopsis which is just “telling myself the story,” a convo with my editor, euphoria, pondering, thinking, pondering, thinking, writing like a mad woman with my hair on fire, a wave of angst, butt-in-chair, angst, multiple calls to my Susie or Beth Vogt, waking up in the middle of the night wondering if I can do it, spin class where I get GREAT ideas, butt-in-chair, 2500 words per day, mid-story research, beating back panic, wondering if I’ll ever be a good story teller, Facebook time, Facebook time, Facebook time, and more Facebook time.

Oh, you mean the real writing process? Once I know the idea and my publisher has buy-in, I do a lot of character and plot work. Because the external journey impacts the internal journey which is really what the story is about.

I “tell myself the story” by writing the synopsis. Try to catch the cliche’s and holes at this point. But some won’t be discovered until I’m writing.

I imagine the beginning, middle and end, and what kind of epiphany and journey the characters will take.

I look for symbols and metaphor than I can weave into the spiritual journey. For all the royal books there was a fairytale aspect that needed to be layered in.

Calculating backwards from my deadline, I figure how many words I need to write a day to get the first draft done. Once it’s done, I rewrite the book, sometimes from scratch. But I know the story, I know what I want to do, and the rewriting process goes quickly.

I research in the beginning but a lot of times I pause for mid writing research. But the goal is to always make the word count and keep writing forward.

Maybe I’ll even grab a book on writing and in a flash of panic, start reading to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing. Ha!

So there you have it. Check out Serena’s post and hop on over to the other blogs!