The Romancechick Speaks

Christmas Day has past and we’re in that kind of “limbo” time between Christmas and New Year’s. It’s not really a vacation time for most people because businesses go back to their normal schedules come Monday (if they didn’t today) and most people have to go back to work.

Beloved is in academia again, so our lives revolve around the school year even more than they would with just the kids. His work is on hold until after the holiday, like the Boy’s. The Girl doesn’t go back to college until sometime the middle of January, so it seems to me like the rest of the world should be on vacation, too.

I’m working on my new contemporary romance, The Fairy Godmother’s Bridesmaid Dress. I’m pretty sure that title won’t last as I’m planning a series using the same dress, and they can’t all be titled that.

I’m trying to get over my “fear of the blank page.” I kinda worry about starting something new because I’m a little concerned I won’t actually be able to finish.

Even after having two books published, I’m not sure whether I’m a pantser or a plotter. I started writing this book after I had a dream about a bridesmaid dress left in a bathroom and I woke up and wondered what would happen if the dress was somehow magic and when worn, it would lead a woman to her true soul mate.

When I was isolated for the radioactive iodine treatment, I wrote three chapters and the book seemed to sail along smoothly. However, I got farther into it and the bumps showed up. Now I’m going back and reworking some of the motivations and things.

Beloved has finished his book. Yay! And now he’s back to reading Sword & Illusion. Our plan is that I will have it done by my birthday in February.

I’ve been feeling a little down lately because we’re here at the end of 2008 and I don’t really seem that I’m any further along in any of my goals than I was last year at this time. I hope that by getting S&I finished by the time I turn 50 I can get some of my confidence back.

I write clean books.

Neither of the books I’ve published have anything graphic, sexually, in them. One is an inspirational romance and the other is a fantasy. Both are completely wholesome enough for your teenager or your grandmother to read. Even your priest, if he’s interested.

Does that make me weird?

Recently I did a chat on the Catholic Writers’ Guild. I was asked how I, as a devout Catholic, deal with my writer friends who write erotica. Do I see my friendship as an evangelization opportunity.

Well, I don’t. I see my writer friends as my writer friends, not as a potential mission field. I’m not shy about my beliefs, either, however. They all know that I write clean, and I think it shocks them a little that I know words like “erection.” Hello? Married almost 22 years, teach Natural Family Planning, have a kid??

The way I “deal” with the erotica authors is the same way I deal with this historical authors, except I probably won’t buy any of the erotica authors’ books. I have a couple of critique partners who write “a bit” hotter than I do. At least one considers herself an erotica author. She’s the one who’s been helping me the most on my current work in progress.

She asked me, jokingly, a couple of weeks ago, if I’d read her newest work for critiquing purposes. I said, without blinking, that I would. I won’t pay money for it, but I’d be happy to help her out as she’s been helping me.

Today our writers’ group had its annual Christmas lunch/party. One of our members brought a bunch of books to give away. One was a Love Inspired. I knew no one else would want to take it, probably, but I have so many books I’ll probably be reading them on the way to my funeral if I want to get them finished. I wonder if we can take books to heaven??

Anyway, I passed it to someone else and one member, unpublished, but well known for her legendary 40 page foreplay scene, took one look at it and said, “Oh, I can’t take an inspirational!” and passed it back to me.

I don’t feel comfortable writing sex scenes, even much less graphic than erotica. I don’t feel comfortable writing unmarried sex or even married sex scenes. I’m a big “close the bedroom” door writer, but right now I’m feeling like I’m going against the tide.

My latest book is not an inspirational. I have a little more sexual tension than inspirationals allow, but I won’t have my characters go to bed together and I won’t have them even remove clothing, but I think there are some “hotter” spots, if only because of their awareness of one another.

However, because it’s clean, it kinda makes me the odd “man” out among my writing friends, and frankly, I really HATE being seen as the one we have to be careful around because “she writes sweet.” I’m just a normal person, like they are. I’d never consider an erotic author to be “easy” or “a tramp” (to use a nicer word than the one I’m thinking). I don’t want to be considered the straight laced repressed schoolmarm.

I asked my husband if my writing choices make me weird, and in his own loving way he said, “You’re merely a Psychotic Puritanical Prude.”

What do you guys think?

	2343
72
lab.drwicked.com

28,175 / 55,000 (51.2%)

Recently, we got rid of cable and are doing all of our TV watching from DVDs, mostly from Netflix. This also gives me a chance to indulge in my love of the Lord of the Rings movies in all their glorious LENGTH, at my leisure.

The boy loves these movies, too, and I’m happy to share them with him, since the Girl has to be force to sit down and watch them. I think if she gave them a chance, she’d like them. They’re like her kind of thing, all fantasy and magic and stuff.

Anyway, yesterday both kids were sick with bad colds. The Boy doesn’t have school this week, so it’s not a big deal. Last night, while Beloved was at choir practice, I asked him if he wanted to watch Fellowship of the Ring again. (BTW, our copy of Return of the King is a mess because some little boy, when he was MUCH younger, got out all the DVDs and left them on the floor and walked on them! So, I’m going on ebay to get another copy.)

Anyway, we watched just long enough to get Frodo to Rivendell before the Girl remember some homework (she stayed home from college yesterday) that she needed to get done RIGHT NOW.

Now, if you remember these movies, there’s a scene when we first see Liv Tyler/Arwen. She comes out of the light toward Frodo who has been injured by a Nazgul blade.

My darling little boy said, “Mommy, you’re pretty just like she is.”

Aww.

This morning, I was telling Beloved over breakfast that the Boy thinks I’m as beautiful as Liv Tyler (which I sould LOVE to be!)

The Boy, eating his cereal, said, “Or Jackie Tyler.”

For the less geeky among you, Jackie Tyler is the mother of Rose Tyler:

a companion of Doctor Who #9 and #10, and arguably, Doctor Who’s true love.

To understand what a compliment this is, you have to know that the Boy rates all girls in his class (and, according to him ANY of them could be his girlfriend) according to Doctor Who companions.

These are the three he knows (besides Sarah Jane who has/had her own show and he doesn’t really think of her as a companion). These women are the basis for all girls - he often says things like “She’s beautiful like Rose,” in which case I know the girl is blond. He knows one black girl from his preschool class and “she’s beautiful like Martha.”

So, you see, while Jackie Tyler and Liv Tyler don’t actually look that much alike, it’s a big compliment for him to think I’m beautiful like these two women.

I’ll take it!

 

 

	2107
67
lab.drwicked.com

23,737 / 55,000 (43.2%)

	2011
52
lab.drwicked.com

18,858 / 55,000 (34.3%)

Totally not where I’d like to be, but I’m having so trouble with this book. This was the book that was going so well in the beginning, but I’ve come to the “sagging middle” or as I call it, the quicksand part of the book.

My characters aren’t doing anything interesting and I’m not sure what they’re supposed to be doing!

However, I will keep going and as my friend Rhonda says, “Finish what you start, and fix what you finish.” I’ll do it, with her help!

I am finding that my confidence level isn’t as high as I’d like about my writing, and other parts of my life. It may have to do with the husband being out of town and my having to deal with kids, bills and burned out florescent lights by myself, but right now I’m not convinced I can finish this book.

Words of encouragement are…you know… encouraged. And appreciated.

15,711 / 55,000 (28.6%)

On Monday I wrote 2,097 words.
Yesterday, 178.

Yes, I think I need to figure a way to be more consistent!

Actually, there were several all connected. It’s almost like God thinks I need to be shaken over and over again until I get the message!

Yesterday the priest at Mass was from Food for the Poor. He told stories that broke my heart. Little kids who only have dirt to eat, families where they have to take turns eating because there isn’t enough for everyone to eat everyday, heartwrenching stories. I sat in Mass and cried as I listened. I am such a softie.

Here I am listening to these stories as the Boy is telling me that he’s hungry and I just wanted to cry more. I told him I was NOT going to talk about what we were going to have for dinner and if Mass was almost over because I knew we had chicken and pork chops and milk and bread and food in abundance and little children around the world die every day because they don’t have anything to eat.

On the way home I told my husband I wanted to give all the money I’ve been saving to go to RWA’s National Conference in Nashville in 2010. I have a jar on my dresser and at the end of the week any money left over from the weekly food budget goes in there along with coins/change I get from various shopping trips. I have no idea exactly how much is in there but I know there is about $43 in bills and the jar is full of change besides.

I fully expected him to say no.

I kinda thought he would.

He didn’t.

Then this morning my Bible reading was about the golden calf the children of Israel worshipped when Moses was gone for so long up on Mount Sinai, and the devotion was about God asking the writer to give up her shopping addiction for Lent. God asked me, quietly, if I was REALLY willing to give up the money I’d been saving for his children.

And deep down, I wasn’t.

It had been a gesture. A thing of the moment, but here God was asking me for real. Am I willing to give up what isn’t, truly, that important to help someone or several someones who can really use it?

Boy, you know what? It was hard. I really want to go to Nashville for RWA Nationals in 2010. I haven’t been since 2006 and maybe by then I’ll have sold another book. I hope so.

Before anyone got up, I folded a load of clothes and watched about 10 minutes of something I had on tape, and when I turned off the DVR, the TV was on a commercial about a charity that feeds the hungry in Africa.

I mean, come on. How many times to I have to be convicted of this???

My husband, this morning, told me to take the change to the Coin-Star and get it converted into bills so we know how much is in there. We’ll send it to Food for the Poor and I can start saving again for Nashville. We’re also considering cancelling our cable and going with Netflicks for our television viewing and sending money every month to Food for the Poor.

Okay, God, is this what you wanted me to do?

I don’t mean something like Hans and Franz on SNL wanting to Pump (::clap::) you up! This is a little more cerebral.

Rhonda, my friend and critique partner, mentioned that she had signed up for Sweating with Sven, and since this was in a writing context, I assumed it wasn’t some program at a nearby fitness center so I asked her about it. She sent me to this site.

I did NaNoWriMo for two years, but last year and this year I made the decision not to because I have works in progress I need to finish. NaNo is great and fun and exhausting but the major rule is that you start with something brand new on 1 Nov and right now I just cant afford to start another new work until I get some of these backlogged projects finished.

Of course, that said, I’m working on a new book - a short contemporary, something I haven’t written in a long time. And I having so much fun with this book. It’s actually fun to write a simple book after the complicated fantasies. Sword & Illusion isn’t finished, but I’m waiting for Beloved to send back his edits of Chapters 4-7 before I move on. In the meantime, I’m writing The Fairy Godmother’s Bridesmaid Dress.

It’s this book I’ll be using with 70 Days of Sweat. I’ve already set my own goal of 8 pages so writing the 4-6 days “Sven” recommends shouldn’t be too hard.

Also, I’ve gotten back to trying to do “FlyLady.” I’m not actually signing up for her emails as I already get so much email I can’t read it all, but I have her book and got her emails long enough I knew the basics. Plus, she based her system on the Sidetracked Home Executives which served me well for a long time. I have a lot of their books, too, and I spent the last week setting up a personal planner journal system that kind of combines all the FlyLady and SHE components in a way that works for me. I like FlyLady’s routine system but I can’t really make her Control Journal work for me. I need something I can carry in my purse, and the SHE’s card box doesn’t really work for that either, but I like the card box system. However, I think my personal planner works pretty well. I can carry it around and keep all my routines in it and all that. It’s still an evolving system, so we’ll see what happens.

Okay, today I’m heading out to see a play with the Girl and trying to do some scrapping. What are you all up to this weekend?