The Joy of Writing: A Guest Post by Jasmine Guillory
The author of The Wedding Date and By the Book is back with a red-hot romance that takes two women out of their comfort zones and into each other’s hearts. Read on for an exclusive essay from Jasmine Guillory on writing Flirting Lessons.
Paperback $19.00
Flirting Lessons
Flirting Lessons
In Stock Online
Paperback $19.00
A captivating and sizzling new queer romance by New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Guillory.
A captivating and sizzling new queer romance by New York Times bestselling author Jasmine Guillory.
Flirting Lessons helped me fall in love with writing again. This is my first book release in two and a half years; before that, I’d been writing and publishing at a relatively fast clip, releasing one or two books a year for my first five years in publishing. And then I hit a wall. Everything about writing and publishing felt overwhelming, but worse, it felt like my creativity was gone. I tried to write, but it felt like there was a big empty space in my head where my characters all used to live. I missed them! I liked having them around! But I listened to the smart people in my life who told me the best thing I could do for myself and my writing was to take a break, so I did.
Months later, when I came back to writing, I put a note up in my office that said “Remember, you like writing.” I wanted that reminder right there, that the whole reason I started writing in the first place was for the fun of it. Writing for me was originally a place to play with my creativity, to experiment with storytelling, to enjoy myself on the page, to tell myself stories that would make me laugh and cry and think. And so when I started writing Flirting Lessons, that’s exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to bring back that joy of writing, to get to have fun with Avery and Taylor and their love story, to get lost in brainstorming who they were and what their romance could be.
I started out slowly, with some fits and starts and scenes that didn’t quite work, but after a while, I got into the swing of writing again. I made lists of places Avery and Taylor could go on their flirting lessons, things they could do, and got excited about the prospect of writing each of them. I figured out who Taylor and Avery both were, why they would embark on a series of flirting lessons with each other, and – especially – why they would fall in love with one another. Writing this book made me remember that I don’t just like writing, I love writing, and I especially love writing romances. Taylor and Avery brought that love back to me, and I’ll be eternally grateful to them for that.
I’m also so grateful to my readers for waiting so patiently for my next book! I hope they love this book and these characters as much as I loved writing it, and I hope you can feel how much fun I had with Taylor and Avery and their flirting lessons.
xo
Jasmine Guillory