I love weddings. I cry at weddings, even of people I barely know, and love shopping for wedding gifts, attending weddings, watching everything from the corny cutting of the cake to the silly tossing of the garter. I love it all.

Writing a wedding-centered book Best Man Says I Do meant I could live in that wedding world for a nice long while. I had just finished a continuity based on a wedding planner business (Sweetheart Lost and Found), which was a blast, not just because I got to write with my friends, but because I got to create an entire fictional world that existed solely for weddings.

I think the reason I love weddings so much is because they’re so hopeful. Everyone there is happy and smiling (okay, most times), and the couple is filled with hope. They are sure that they will be the ones to beat the odds and stay together forever, and you can see those dreams for their future shining in their eyes, hear it in every whispered word on the dance floor, feel it in the sweetness of their kisses.

It’s that hope that gets us through the tough times. I just wrote a handout for the writing workshop I lead on show, not tell, and one of the examples I used in there was the moment when someone first falls in love. Most of us can remember that moment vividly, and I think that’s because it’s the moment we go back to when things get tough, when it seems like the darkest days have descended upon our relationship. There was hope that day, and hope can be, in my opinion, one of the most powerful emotions you have.

That’s part of why I write romance. Because when I read or write that genre, it refills my hope well. With all the darkness in the world, that well can get drained pretty fast, but romance restores those feelings. It makes me remember that no matter how dark things get, there can be light just around the corner.

Best Man Says I Do isn’t a dark book per se, but it is about the impact dark moments can have on us. How we can let a tragic event rule the choices we make later in life—choices that may deny us the very happiness we deserve and need. Most of my books are about something like that, and about how facing those moments allow us to become honest with ourselves, and through that, find true happiness.

I guess that’s why I cry at weddings (I have one to go to in a couple weeks, and I already have my tissues ready). Because I know that the people who are standing up at that altar have decided to take a leap of faith, and with a lot of hope and love, they are betting they will be able to beat the odds and overcome anything in their paths—together. I hope that the couple reaches back into that hope well when the inevitable dark moments come, and remember what brought them together in the first place.

If they can’t, well, I highly recommend reading romance novels. Because those books are filled with that same bright hope that we all need to hold onto a little tighter.

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Read well and often,

Shirley







http://shirleyjump.com