I’m moving over to Blogger just because our family blog is a Blogger blog, and I can’t deal with figuring out two blogging things at the same time. Could I possibly use the word “blog” any more in this post? Sounds like something you’d find behind a horse, if you know what I mean.
I’m committed now to blogging on a regular basis. Really. I am. Uh huh. Not going to make a liar out of myself, no sir. Although I guess it would help if I thought anyone was actually reading this. Sounds like there’s an echo in here.
Speaking of which, did you know that a duck’s quack doesn’t echo and no one knows why?
So anyway, I finished a round of rewriting for my historical erotica novel, tentatively titled “The Bridge at Daybreak.” While it always feels good to finish rewrites, there’s also always a nagging voice wondering how the book could still be better.
Lately with the intention of sharpening my focus, I’ve been reading books about plotting and pre-writing. I’ve always been something of a la-dee-dah writer—writing when the mood strikes me, when a scene or character pops into my head, following the story without much idea of where it’s going.
I think that technique is no longer going to work for me. It leads to my stories being kind of unwieldy and flabby. I dislike both unwieldiness and flab. I have a degree in Library and Information Studies—we love cataloguing and organizing and classifying. Doesn’t mean I always put those ideas into practice (although I did organize my daughter’s clothes according to type—onesies, dresses, long onesies, pants—and label the drawers accordingly. I do so love my label maker.]
So I’m going to start imposing more structure on my writing in the hopes that I won’t find myself halfway through a book thinking, “Now what?” I know some writers like discovering where the story and character takes them—I’m one of those who wants to know all that in advance. Other writers can make me think, “Now what?” when I’m reading their books. When I’m writing, I want to think, “Now this.”
Posted in Writing | Leave a Comment »
1. High heels.
2. Why the metaphor “sleep like a baby” became a common phrase since babies DON’T SLEEP EVER.
3. How my two and a half year old can eat as much as an adult (to wit – in one sitting, an entire large avocado, two slices of wheat bread with hummus, a roasted chicken thigh, and 8 oz of milk).
4. Why some writers don’t use quotation marks to indicate dialogue.
5. Why I love writing and can’t manage to keep a decently updated blog to save my life.
6. Pretty much everything about this.
Posted in Random Thoughts | Leave a Comment »
Wow. I’m not so good at getting this blogging thing down. Between a toddler, writing and living life in general it’s not so easy to find time to update, is it? I haven’t done much work lately on my latest book, tentatively titled The Music Within, but sometimes I think there’s a certain degree of lying fallow that has to take place in the creative part of the brain before the seedlings begin to sprout.
The Music Within is somewhat more complex and suspenseful than my finished manuscript Glass Hummingbird. In a nutshell, The Music Within is about a generations-old conflict between two families and how it threatens the fragile relationship of an artist and investgator as they begin to unearth shadowy family secrets. I love family secrets – although I admit to feeling a certain degree of pressure to make it a really “good” secret so readers don’t feel cheated when it’s finally revealed.
So that is in progress, and I’m thinking ahead to book three, which is rather nebulous right now but seems to involve a librarian and 18th century France. That should be fun!
Posted in Writing | 1 Comment »
I’m a bad woman. Not “bad” as in dangerous, sexy bad (I wish), but “bad” as in – I’m a really lousy girly-girl woman. There are things I just don’t like that I’m apparently supposed to like, and shopping is at the top of the list. I don’t like to shop. I really don’t like to shop in department stores.
The fluorescent lights give me a headache and the smell – dear god, the smell – of the perfume department is enough to practically make my eyes water. I look awful in ANY dressing room mirror, I never pick the right size clothes on the first try (necessitating at least three trips back to said dressing room with distorted mirror), and I frequently stare agape at one price tag or another thinking, “Who in the love of god would pay that for this?” And designer clothes? What’s that about?
Nope. Don’t like it. I like “stuff” shops such as Pottery Barn and Williams Sonoma where I can think, “Oh, wow, what a beautiful, colorful set of hors d’oeuvres plates for that cocktail party that I will never host but where everyone will nibble on asparagus mousse and oyster bruschetta while drinking elegantly-named drinks like Sazerac and Pegu and discussing auteur theory in French New Wave cinema.”
Then I remember that my two-year old will more than likely load the delicately crafted plates with “cwagohs” and “ceweal” or that they will serve as a holding place for the ear plugs that he always manages to find and clutch possessively in one fist – for no apparent reason – while ambling about the room.
So, yeah. Shopping. Not for me. High heels? Don’t get me started. I lurch about like a minotaur if I wear high heels. Pedicures? Hah! Don’t come anywhere near my feet. STEP AWAY FROM THE FEET!
Manicures? Okay, well, I did get a manicure a few years ago for my wedding day (overpriced weddings? don’t get me started). I do admit to having quite nice fingernails when they’re all one length, trimmed and filed, so they did look fabulous after the wedding manicure. But would I ever pay that much money for a manicure on a regular basis? There’s more chance of me actually hosting that cocktail party.
Lest you think I’m totally hopeless, I confess that I do moisturize daily, never leave the house without powder and lipstick (Mac’s Del Rio – outrageously priced), and have been known to use products such as Biore facial strips, henna for my hair, Nivea Visage eye cream and vitamin e oil. So maybe if I can’t actually host a cocktail party, I can attend one. Or at least I can arrange Cheerios and crackers artistically on my porcelain appetizer plates and serve them to my two-year old ear plug aficionado with great aplomb.
Frankly, that sounds better than Sazerac, asparagus mousse and auteur theory any day.
Posted in Life | Leave a Comment »
My favorite books focus on complex characters. I’m always willing to forgive a weakish plot if the characters involved are so finely drawn that just reading about them is interesting. The books with strong plots and complex characters are, of course, the real winners. When it comes to romance novels, I’m a fan of the classic tortured hero (although when I finally read Wuthering Heights, I wasn’t as enamoured of Heathcliff as I’d expected to be), but it’s the books – romance or otherwise – featuring strongly multi-faceted women that I remember.
They are memorable not only because of who they are, but also because of what they do. And “what they do” is often breach sexual norms. Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Grim fates notwithstanding, these are characters whom the authors paint with single-haired brush so as to detail every crevice of their psyches. More recent books that come to mind are Memoirs of a Geisha, Slammerkin, and the character of Sibylla in Helen deWitt’s The Last Samurai, who is easily one of the most unique and fascinating characters in fiction. Another book I love is MR Lovric’s Carnevale, the story of a 16th century Venetian portrait painter and her affairs with Casanova and Byron. Cecelia has a sharp wit, a barbed tongue. an enviable artistic talent and a completely defiant attitude towards convention. What’s not to admire?
When writing romance novels, the difficulty in creating a female protagonist who is complex to the point of being somewhat unsympathetic is that the reader has less reason to hope for her final happiness. Moreover, it’s all the more difficult to make a relationship believeable since there are more internal hurdles for the characters to overcome. It’s easy to make a hero fall in love with a pure, virtuous, virginal heroine. It’s not so easy to make him fall in love with a woman with a dramatic history of sexual conflict, drug use and crime.
I personally think such a heroine would be far more interesting to write (and read about), but I’m not familiar with any such heroine in romance novels. If you are, please tell me because I think romances containing more obstacles for the protagonists to overcome lead to a far more satisfying and welcome conclusion. The more difficult the path, the sweeter the reward – or something like that. Heroines who have lived a lot, stuck to their guns and gone after what they want – well, they deserve no less than a happy ending.
Posted in Books | 2 Comments »
It is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market.
-Anita Brookner
So I’ve been on this quest to begin writing for a mainstream romance reader market. Trouble is – I’m not quite sure what that means exactly since there are many subgenres of romance ranging from paranormal to erotic to suspense. With, I’m sure, many cross-subgenres in-between. Paranormal erotica? Historical suspense? Inspirational time travel? Regency erotica? And what, may I ask, IS “mainstream” anymore?
I’ve been using the word “mainstream” rather loosely in my head to define a group of readers who are not particuarly dedicated to one subgenre or another. My book is a contemporary with historical elements (which I guess makes it cross-subgenre), and my expectation is that it would just be labelled “Romance” on the spine.
Yet all of these labels don’t really do justice to the complexities of the stories romance writers write. They make sense from a marketing perspective and a bookseller’s perspective, but ultimately I think most writers want to write for a reader’s market – that group of people who want to enjoy a good story with sympathetic, flawed characters who overcome their imperfections and obstacles to triumph in the end.
Kind of like the tortoise.
Posted in Writing | Leave a Comment »
My son is two. I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a mathematical correlation between a two-year old and the word No. Maybe it’s because there are two letters in the word No. Whatever the reason, my son believes that No is the holy grail of the English language. He worships at the altar of No. And his Nos seem frequently based on my asset, which is just weird. A typical conversation:
SON: Dwah!
ME: Okay, let’s draw.
SON: No dwah! More owange!
ME: Okay, I’ll get you more orange.
SON: No owange! Woom?
ME: Okay, let’s go play in your room.
SON: No woom!
Then there’s the – I’m sure – quite common rebuttal to any question or statement:
ME: Do you want some apple?
SON: No apple!
ME: Do you want to read?
SON: No weed!
ME: Time to sleep!
SON: No sweep!
ME: Come on – we’re going to have fun!
SON: No fun!
He must be destined for life as an academic. And then there is the dramatic head-wagging back and forth, apropos of absolutely nothing, while issuing a refrain of “no no no no no no no no” in various intonations. “Yes” is just not part of his vocabulary. We’ve gotten a few “yeahs” in the past, but for the most part he is All About The No. When he actually does want something, he just repeats the noun:
ME: Do you want some crackers?
SON: Cwagoah!
ME: Do you want some milk?
SON: Milk!
ME: Do you want to go to the park?
SON: Pahk!
The good news is that we know quite clearly what he wants and doesn’t want, which is a highly useful thing to know when you’re dealing with a toddler. I imagine this whole communication thing will be MUCH easier when he’s a teenager, right? Right? Helloooo?? Hey, why are you laughing?
Posted in Life | 2 Comments »
