Writing Emotion

Writing about desire taps into vulnerability. When I penned Pages in the Wind the plot had significant grit and violence; it was essential to the story. I chose not to weigh it down with explanation or wordy passages. My upcoming book, Brooklyn Bitters, deals with love, betrayal, and loyalty. My character, Kate, is a career woman whose life has gotten away from her. She missed out on romantic love. In this scene, she lets go of her walls and we feel her inner dialogue. It wasn’t hard to write, but it felt, at times, familiar.

He said love. The rest of it was soliloquy, metaphoric babble, and probably a divergent tactic, but I didn’t care. I was hungry. Starving. God help me, even desperate. My desire for him I’d kept tempered by my doubts collapsed under the word love. A torrent of suppressed passion I had re-directed into duty and hard work engulfed me. I couldn’t resist anymore because I couldn’t swim. Damn it—I didn’t want to.