Do you like to read romance novels? Wouldn't you like to know more about your favorite authors? Well you came to the right place! Join the writers of Romance Weekly as we go behind the scenes of our books and tell all..... About our writing of course! Every week we'll answer questions and after you've enjoyed the blog on this site we'll direct you to another. So come back often for a thrilling ride! Tell your friends and feel free to ask us questions in the comment box.

This week's questions come from the lovely Leslie Hachtel. She asks: What do you love best about your writing? Like the least? And what are you doing to fix the things you don’t like?

Before we begin, the hop is a loop so check out author Jenna Da Sie and find out how she answered this week's questions.

I have a love hate relationship with editing. For those writers who hate even the hint of the dreaded “e” word, trust me I understand.

Let’s just get this part of the discussion out of the way. Self-editing is long and tedious. When my initial writing is going quickly and the ideas are popping up like rabbits in spring, the editing process puts all of that in low gear and those gears grind like you wouldn’t believe. I know the edits improve everything. Yet, this is when the process becomes slow and sometimes boring. Especially, when I’m trying to find all the repetitive words in my work in progress and decide what to keep, what to change, and what to discard. That’s just me editing my own work. Now, after that’s done I ship my baby off to a professional for her to find all the repetitive words I didn’t find and all the other holes, grammar errors, and downright silliness I have to fix. Another slow process and one that causes great distress when I’m sitting at home wondering about the horror of a manuscript I’ll get in return.

I’m sure your wondering where the love comes into the story.

Editing is where the true story comes out into the light. I’m very single-minded. I can’t write and edit at the same time. What comes out in writing just comes out and there isn’t time to stop and analyze what is either being typed or written on paper. My mind must get all the pieces down first. I would compare my first draft to a baby who was given a paint brush and paints, a smock and hours of play time. The writing is fun and laugh out loud glorious. Occasionally, the words slow and the process bogs down, but the draft is always faster than the edits. I let this wondrous creation sit for a bit and then I read the pages and pages upon pages of crap. The editor in my brain comes out and tells me all the areas where I lost track of the plot or the character and how on page 230 a key element from chapter one is missing.

Why do I love this?

My editing process required a lot of re-reads. I get to know the manuscript and my characters well and I fall in love with them, the world and the stakes that are causing them distress. The pieces of the manuscript start to fit together like puzzle pieces and I finally see what I had written was a good basis, but now the really good stuff is coming out. In keeping with my metaphor I wouldn’t say by this time I’m a fine artist – I’ll go with art student – but the pages don’t look like they’ve been created by a ten-month old. The last piece is getting additional eyes on the work and sending to a professional editor. Because I know the work so well it’s easy to miss when I’m filling in the blank and a reader would be like … how old is this writer, is she a baby?

The hating part of editing I think is difficult to fix. What I’ve tried and continue to try is attempt different techniques where the first drafts aren’t such a free-for-all. I’m not a plotter by any means, but I’ve utilized a summary of my work in progress that helps keep me on track in the early stages of writing. I’ve tried different writing tools to help speed the process and I try to not hate editing, because I know at that stage I’m close to having a finished book!

So on to the next writer in the hop, Tracey Gee. I can't wait to find out what she loves and hates about writing.

See ya next week!