Your Own Self Told You

From your interview at

http://webpetals.livejournal.com/233816.html

Here's what you wrote about your own writing:

Do you have any suggestions to help folks become a better writer? If so, what are they?

I write from emotion. It's important to remember that even though one may be writing about something totally out of one's experience, one should insert a thread of familiar emotion through it. I often start out with the main character's state of mind in my stories because it sets the tone to the whole book. In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, all my stories begin that way.

What do you think makes a good story?

A good story is intimate to the reader. It moves from being mere words on the pages to a scene or an emotion in the reader's mind. As a reader myself, good story is involving, surprising, often in deep POV. I love snappy dialogue and crazy action. I love characters who learn something about themselves as their stories evolved. And a good story, to me, must have a satisfying ending. That's why I read and write romance.

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I would like to ask that if you know your writing process so well, why are you crying so hard over your work-in-progress? Is it because it lack emotion?

Sometimes it's good to dissect one's own writing by asking the above simple questions. It can help solve your current problem in that stubborn project.

I know, the other books were all about dangerous men and women with guns and secrets, and this one is about a magical Viking with a big sword. You have to somehow get it into your head that it's the same thing and not get intimidated. For Muse's sakes, how can you be intimated about magical phrases, weird weapons, and unexplained phenomena when you tackled stuff like virtual entanglement, brain entrainment, and techno/bio-weaponry in your Virtual series without blinking?

What is the problem here?

These are the questions all writers must ask as they struggle.