This is going to be a fairly serious exploration of my major difficulty in writing, folks. It is going to get heavy, which is kinda’ ridiculous for a blog about writing a Romance novel. Well, I suppose in technical terms it seems silly, Romance is supposed to be fluff or beach material, but I wouldn’t insult my readership by assuming that quality is unnecessary. Genre is generally not serious literature, but I still hold it to a high standard. This is why I hate reading Anne Rice and A Game of Thrones, holy idiom Batman! Seriously dudes, pull out a thesaurus.
My minor difficulties are upsetting enough. I have an almost complete lack of momentum or discipline. It has been months since I have written anything new and I can only blame one month on being mopey over a boy. Some time was spent on waiting on getting some outside input before I continued in order to curtail any bad habits early; but, in reality, the majority of my inertia is pure procrastination. Once I get going I can put words to page at a steady, if slow, pace. Sadly, getting started after a break appears to take three months. Then, once I have started I am lucky to produce 1000 words at a sitting. A grand takes me about two hours and most of that time is spent refilling my latte, playing with my Pandora playlist, and checking Facebook for responses to my snide spelling corrections on other peoples’ pages. Oh yeah, I am That Girl.
So, not only am I terrible at the work of writing, I am also completely unromantic. I know, what the hell am I doing writing Romance? When talking about February 14th this year I referred to it as “Monday.” I watched Titanic on Saturday because it was a Hurricane Holiday, which is just like any other holiday in the sense that all calories are free and you can indulge in those terrible movies that you would never consider on a regular day. Now, you all know my love of Kate, and if I didn’t dislike Leonardo DiCraprio so much the only thing to hate about Titanic would be Cameron’s handling of the loss of 1500 lives; specifically, his focus and championing of love over the loss of 1500 lives. I mean, all those people died and he spends 95% of the movie focused on two people!
This is how I know I am almost completely unromantic. I find “love at first sight” or even believing one’s self to be “in love” after four days (the length of time between the RMS Titanic’s launch and sinking) completely insipid. Additionally, that kiss on the bow looks horribly uncomfortable. Her neck is almost Exorcist-style. Also, that portrait scene is ridiculous. As my roommate pointed out, anyone could have come in to the room. Even if it wasn’t Billy Zane, it could have been service staff, and service staff are the last group of people you want knowing or seeing your business.
Now, Titanic is one of three movies that makes me cry.* (I know, I don’t cry at movies either, I am so not romantic.) However, I don’t give two poops for when Jack sinks like the frozen meat bag that he is, I cry when the old people are spooning on the bed and the mom is telling a story to her children while they are TRAPPED IN A SINKING SHIP. Wikipedia told me that one child from first class and no children from second class died in the accident where 52 third class children died which was 66% of third class children on the boat. So THAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED. Sort of. I find that to be an incredibly believable imagining of one family’s experience. So, clearly I am a Humanist. I cry at the humanity of things, but not for the romance. So how the hell am I going to achieve a Romance novel?
Luckily for me, while genre needs to be technically well written, formula, which is usually considered poor writing, is entirely acceptable. Form will give me a structure to work around, so on a basic level I will be able to ask myself “how do I get my characters to believably end up at this juncture?” and writing the answer will also be writing the novel. However, I am afraid that following this step alone would leave me with a rather emotionally bare, but well constructed plot. I can only hope that my humanist tendencies will lend the emotion and create something less sticky sweet than Titanic but also something beyond my intellectualism that is as icy as the North Atlantic waters which froze the life out of those unluckily without a lifeboat. Sometimes I think a whirlwind romance would knock my dry intellectualism about love out of my head (I totes believe in love, but not “I don’t know you but I love you” love). But, then, I have made it to somewhere near 30 without my beliefs in love being shaken, so I don’t think it’s going to happen.
*For the record, the other two movies that make me cry are All Quiet on the Western Front because he is thisclose to surviving the war and then he gets shot and Cool Runnings because when they carry that sled to the finish they just have so much heart. Also, both of these movies depict more or less actual events. See, there is that humanity again.
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