I'm a recent college graduate with a degree in English Literature who, very recently, came to the conclusion that if I could spend the rest of my life writing romance novels, I'd be a happy camper.

Without the time (or money) to enroll in a creative writing MFA program, or even an in-person writing workshop, I've had to "educate" myself with books on writing style.

I've read and skimmed several over the past several months--books on dialogue, scene/plot development, characterization, etc--but Leigh Michaels' "On Writing" is the ONLY style book I've been literally compelled to read cover-to-cover. Usually, I start these types of books with the best laid plans, then end up skimming or skipping to the pertinent parts (i.e., what I need help with at that moment), but THIS book is so well-structured, it pulls you along.

Aimed at the beginning romance writer (like me!), Michaels' clearly outlines common pitfalls and cliches to avoid, gives extremely helpful tips on how to write "from a male POV" or "a female POV", and goes so far as to explain the structure, layout and general guidelines for several types of romance fiction (inspiration, sweet, short contemporary, long contemporary, chick-lit AND erotica). Basically, no matter why type of romance you're trying to write, there are helpful tips for you!

It's also chock-full of excerpts from published romance novels, which helps Michaels illustrate the topics she's discussing (there's one section where she points out how silly the overusage of dialogue tags can be that made me laugh out loud).

I just bought this book yesterday and, despite the fact that it's really just a style book, I've read almost the entire 250-some pages. I'm about halfway through my first novel attempt and I can already see where the tips in this book will help me improve when it's time to go back and revise.

As some have said, this definitely isn't a book for the more experienced/advanced writer (even as a beginner, there were some things discussed that just seemed overly obvious), but it's definitely going to be a valuable resource on my bookshelf as I advance my writing skills.

While this book contained excellent information, I believe the writer intended her audience to be beginning writers. If you've been writing seriously for any given period of time, the information conveyed here is repetitive. In fact, most of the information could be found on the Internet. If you're an intermediate or advanced writer searching for perspective, I'd suggest looking for another manual.

This is a superb book. I don't think I've ever learnt such a lot in such a short space of time and enjoyed it so much than when reading this.

What singles this book out is it's attention to detail and thoroughness. Michaels guides us all through the process from deciding to write a book, to which sub-genre suits you best, summarising all the different aspects of how to write each, straight through to editing and presenting, to writing a synopsis and query letter.

Each chapter takes one aspect of writing a novel, such as plotting, characterisation, dialogue, love scenes, sexual tension etc. and explains it in easy to read language. Then she goes on to use excerpts from different authors, together with more explanation, to illustrate each point. Its very effective and must have taken ages to compile, as she's used a wide variety of authors from both the UK and America.

Her writing and her chosen excerpts are so easy to read that it's very easy to follow, I can quite see why she`s won so many awards.

I enjoyed it so much I just wanted to hole up somewhere and read the whole book straight through, soaking up every word. There's a lot of it (257 pages) and it's quite densely printed, but that doesn't make it difficult to read because the text is broken up by subtitles, bullet points and boxouts.

As a novice writer myself I couldn't recommend it highly enough and will treasure my copy for many years to come.