Sunday, August 28, 2011

A Problem of "Titanic" Emotions

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.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Cats

As a single lady with aspirations of Romance Novelling, I think it is only right to have a chat about cats. I don't mean the musical but if you want to read an interesting blog written by my lovely college mate Anika Chapin about "Cats" go here. I am going to chat about chats...haha, see how I did that? Chat is Frenchy stuff for "cat." It is pronounced like the past tense of the four letter poop word. This is relevant because a) bad puns are always relevant and b) my brother sang this stupid song about "Le chat angora" when he was learning French as a wee babe. Well, ok, he was 7. Oh, and c) my novel has a bunch of poop jokes that I can't seem to work out. I mean, who writes a Romance with poop jokes? Honestly Isabel...

Anyhoo, remember that really depressing part of "High Fidelity" when John Cusack is talking about how he totally could have banged Lili Taylor but then he would "be part of that whole single person culture?"* Well, in the book he goes on to talk about having to stop in medias res to kick the cats off the bed. I can't get this image out of my head, and how depressing it must be to have that perspective all the time. I can't imagine how horrible it must be to go about life with the mentality that instead of being honest with himself about just not being interested in the Sarah character anymore, he has to blame it on the kitties! Lame. That is, of course the raison d'etre (more French, lame) of the Rob character, he doesn't understand himself, and is completely dishonest with the audience, Laura, Marie de Sale, himself, and those poor displaced kitties.

I am probably only haunted by this because instead of turning to the movie "High Fidelity" for comfort after I was brutally dumped (is brutal a harsh word? hmmm...) I decided to read the book because it would take longer.** Really, the only two things I came away from that experience with were that the movie Rob is way more likable than the book Rob and that whole cat moment. So, when I finished the book I immediately watched the movie to at least feel better about older, wiser, jaded Lloyd Dobbler (Rob/John) if not my breakup.

So, how does this have anything to do with the writing process? Well, this is my first writing attempt I will make that does not have a significant cat presence. (Yes, I am a Crazy Cat Lady. My phone gallery is filled with pictures of cats and most of them are not even mine.) In addition to my own emotional reaction to what was probably a throw away to Nick Hornby, I have only ever had very strong reactions for or against my inclusion of kitties in other things I have written, such as all of my screenplays I wrote in college. I have finally learned that cats are either creepily appealing or completely off-putting to a readership, and the way the cats are presented or incorporated can create too many unpredictable reactions. Also, I have to deal with the whole poop joke thing.

I realize only a Crazy Cat Lady would think this warranted an entire blog post. At least I am not this girl. My heart totally bleeds for her brand of nutballs.

*High Fidelity dir. Stephen Frears. Starring John Cusack and Jack Black. 2000.
**Watching High Fidelity and Love and Basketball are my friend Kate's remedies for heartbreak. High Fidelity kinda works alone, but I should probably watch L&B too.

Friday, August 19, 2011

The English Great House

I don't really want to talk about mansions, I want to talk about the relationship between books and movies. I work in film and television. I decided to make that my career through an overindulgence in British adaptations of books into televised movies on PBS and A&E. I know, GIANT NERD. Now that I actually work in the business I realize I have missed my original goal (excepting an approximately one week stint on HBO's "Mildred Pierce" which was awesome because KATE WINSLET IS AWESOME) of adapting all my favorite books into sweeping, sumptuous, costumed romps about the English countryside. Do you want to know how bad the "castles in the air" were?* (That is a Little Women reference, I will get back to this, be prepared for tales of...fan fiction...) I had ideas of sitting on camera dollies wearing Regency era dresses. I know, the image is pretty sad, lame, and not a little gross. (For the sake of the mental image, in terms of the dolly, at the time I didn't have any discernment; but if you asked me now, I would go with a Chapman Hustler, what can I say? I like the "roundie" mode.)

Well, the book/movie/book that brought me to this Friday night of watching "Brideshead Revisited" alone on the couch (getting to that too) is Little Women, which I alluded to earlier. After watching the movie 37 times (not an exaggeration) and reading the book eight times (an approximation) I began writing myself in to the story. You heard me correctly. Before knowing that a whole genre of bad, vanity writing existed that is somewhat euphemistically called "fan fiction," I began my own project of making my life much more interesting and the March sister's much less realistic or readable. Not that Little Women is always readable. There are a lot of morals dripping in saccharine rolling around in there. (Yes, this ties in to "Brideshead," I promise.) Now, my goals were noble. I wanted to save Beth's life. I filled two notebooks with handwritten page after page. I remember finishing the IOWA test early and grabbing the book off the shelf in the school library so I could do some "research" in order to finish a chapter. I am very pleased these notebooks are either destroyed or lost in a storage unit somewhere in Denver. Mom, this is the real reason I refuse to go through that thing. Kidding.

Now, the Little Women project was a year before I discovered Romance, so I was clearly already primed for what I am working on now. What am I working on now, you ask? Well, in tidy fashion, I am writing a novel about an A-list actor who falls in love with his personal assistant. So, I am writing a book about making movies. However, this project has been more difficult than expected. I know very little about actors or their assistants so much of my work has been cornering my production assistant and personal assistant friends and making them tell me about how they get paid, stories of demeaning jobs they have had to perform, and other, myriad personal information that is really none of my business. That, of course is the easy part. As I was editing chapter five yesterday, I realized that the hard part was reconciling the reality of how a movie gets made with developing a plausible book plot. Chapter five must be rewritten. I need my male protagonist to put his college buddy/producer on the alert about his new personal assistant, but I need it to sound believable. Here is where I take some lessons from Brideshead Revisited.

Brideshead is the anti-Romance novel (not to be confused with Priscilla Gilman's The Anti-Romantic Child which should be read by everyone). Yes, it has all the earmarks of a Romance novel with its sweeping landscapes, a beautiful fountain that stands for the yearnings in our innermost hearts, war, and stuffed animals. Here, however, the morality of Little Women turns the characters in on themselves, and creates the travesties of the failed romantic relationships. Unlike Romance, in which Charles would have helped Sebastian overcome his alcoholism and reconciled his Catholicism with a kind God who only loves and does not punish while jaunting off to St. Tropez to sell hand carved statuary to fabulously wealthy tourists (or similar with Julia), everyone ends up alone or dead, much like the empty shell of Brideshead which has been destroyed by the WWII battalion encamped there. While one watches/reads this all happen, one hears Joan Fontaine wistfully reminding us that "we can never go back to Manderley again."** Manderley is another giant English house that gets gutted by a fire by some crazy broad who loved a nasty broad. The mid-20th Century British loved their large houses and (not really) closeted homosexuality.

Both of these books (Brideshead Revisited and Rebecca) have been adapted by the BBC and made readily available to you and me via DVD. Now, Rebecca stays fairly true, and Diana Rigg as the crazy broad (Danvers, if we are being all proper-like) is pretty awesome, like Kate. The original BBC "Brideshead" is probably also very true since it is something like six hours long, but I haven't seen it yet. Tonight I watched the recent, 2008 version, and it's discomfort with the homosexual narrative and pandering to the lonely, single lady are pertinent to the writing of my novel.

Now, my audience is going to be a lot of lonely single ladies. Currently, I am one of those. I embrace me, and I embrace them, but I will not pander to them. The modern "Brideshead" really attempts to work with the "mommy issues" and crises of the faithful, but its glossing over anything "unpleasant," i.e. homosexuality, emotionless unions, miscarriage (they talk about it, but Julia has a second in the book, and also maybe an abortion?) in order to highlight Charles' "loss of love" makes me feel that the production decided to make a 1940's "woman's film" instead of Brideshead Rivisited. It's cool, I know that the movie is not the book. But when the book is structured around a movie, am I going to have to make the same compromises?

A Regency dress on a Hustler is anachronistic, and the ins, outs, and sixteen hour days of filmmaking are tedious. I want to give my readers some insight in to the unglamorous side of filmmaking so when my personal assistant gets swept up in to the world of Oscar parties and drinking white wine with Kate (it is either that or dirty martinis, I wish I knew what she actually drank, because I would drink it, just like her) I want both Christina (my protagonist) and the reader to know the difference.

*My copy of Little Women is in the storage unit in Denver so I can't cite it properly. Louisa May Alcott said "castles in the air" a couple of times in almost every book she ever wrote. Lucy Maud Montgomery (of Anne of Green Gables) probably said it a couple of times too.

** Hitchcock, Alfred. "Rebecca" Joan Fontaine, Lawrence Olivier. Selznick, 1942.
I don't remember if that is the correct way to cite, but it gives you the pertinent facts.



Tuesday, August 16, 2011

I Wrote a Letter from Mr. Darcy

There is not much you need to know about this blog, but I will start out with the pertinent facts. Primarily I intend to use this blog as a way to organize my thoughts as I go through the process of writing my first Romance novel. I have had a love affair (cringing but punning nonetheless) with the genre since I was a young teenager. Most young ladies go through a Romance stage, usually when they have a lot of feelings and urges and are looking for some guidance on how this whole coupling up thing is supposed to work. Sadly, it is only when we reach adulthood (and sometimes not always then) that we realize that Romance is as much a fantasy as Science Fiction or Fantasy itself.

I realized early that reality was missing from the perfect unions in the novels I read. I really think it was when the tall, handsome, humanoid alien brought his human bride to rule his own personal solar system that I realized “hey, clearly the rising divorce rate in America has nothing to do with following the rules of Romance novels;” because that humanoid alien book was written by a hugely popular, best selling author and she was trying to make me believe that romance can work between humans and aliens. This particular set up did not work for me. Despite loving both Sci-Fi and Romance, something about the wildly divergent genres clashing gave me pause in my faith in Romance (novels). While I was pausing, I started to work out the generic rules for Romance, and in the process realized that one day I would absolutely contribute my own work to the incredibly expansive genre.

That is the first thing you need to know. The other two pieces of information are purely incidental to the greater project here of working through my own writing process. Those two things are that I was dumped after writing the first twenty five percent of my novel, and have not written any more since that day two months ago. I have continued to talk to this guy for much of the past two months like a dummy, which led me to stupidly write him a letter from Mr. Darcy.

You know, that letter he hoped Elizabeth had destroyed because it “might justly make [her] hate [him]?”* It is a letter that is all angry and expository and full of self-righteousness. I totally wrote one of those. Now, as all good literary classifiers know, P&P isn’t a Romance Novel but it exposes the stifling nature of Regency life through fantasy, and most girls perform an act of P&P at least once in their lives. Therefore, I think the novel can totally be used to gain access to two of my primary objectives in my own project. Those objectives being that I want to navigate the rules of a genre that has been my comfort and entertainment for fifteen years in order to contribute my own work, and I want to somehow reconcile Romance with reality.

The actual letter in Pride and Prejudice from Mr. Darcy taught me two things about how I am going to write my novel. The first being that my exposition needs to be presented in a way that does not only advance the plot, but also key in to the psychology behind how people interact in order to give insight in to the character’s feelings without describing their physicality. The second lesson I learned is that generically, for the male characters the lesson in how to feel, or understand their own feelings often comes only after they have done (or written) something they regret.

My letter from Mr. Darcy taught me that even when I am hurt I should be nicer if I am putting it in writing because that stuff gets brought back up when talking about feelings and sitting on the couch with one’s ex-boyfriend while the rain pours outside the windows. Yuck.

*Austen. Pride and Prejudice. The Complete Works of Jane Austen. Penguin, 1983. 433. That’s right, I totally cited my work. Yeah college.