Love Without "Love"
A friend of mine recently posted a challenge on Facebook: Say “I LOVE YOU” without using any of those three words. Easy-peasy, right? Not as much as you might think. Finding synonyms or metaphors for “love” isn’t a problem. Situating it within the dyad of me-ness and you-ness without using these words? A teensy bit more challenging. Nonetheless, am I a romance author, or am I a romance author, amiright? I mean, if I can’t say “I love you” without actually saying it, what kind of romance am I writing? So. Rolling up my sleeves (it’s 95 degrees right now, so I actually just pushed my watch up a little bit), I committed to write down the first 20 “I <3 U” alternatives that fluttered like wee turtledoves into my overheated noggin. You’ll notice I decided to use first-person throughout. And yeah, maybe I cheated a little bit (“Thine?” Really ?), but being a romance author also means being a tiny god of the literary world I create. (In other words, I can both cheat and...