Aug 30, 2007
There are lots of articles regarding how difficult it is to write good sex scenes. Those of us who try to write know how true this is. My youngest daughter, the brat, used to work in a store where the employees would take turns reading “the good parts” aloud to each other when there was a lull. They’d snort and snicker in superiority, too young to appreciate they were still limber enough that any inane position they were mocking was still technically possible for them.
I came across the following. No author or title…I’m trying to protect the not-so-innocent.
“With unerring accuracy, he speared her humid depths in a single powerful thrust.”
This is wrong on so many levels. I’m thinking targets, forks, weather, rockets.
Contest!!! Please feel free to add a howler for our amusement from anything you are currently reading/have read. Or, write something bad yourself. Just one sentence, please. Oh, okay, more if you must. I’ll even add this authentic gem from my own writing:
“He entered her with no further preamble.”
Preamble! I hope his constitution was strong.
One random wit will receive September’s prizes. Winner and a new post on September 7.
Aug 24, 2007
…of freedom. The summer season will end officially for me on Monday, August 27 when I sit in the high school auditorium and listen to a bunch of people who probably don’t want to be there either. I got the agenda in the mail the other day, and my school e-mail account is filling up with rules and regs for the new school year. Boo.
I shouldn’t whine. I had a great summer with plenty of days in the sunshine and in the gloom of my writing room. I finished two novellas and worked quite a bit on Paradise. Entered two writing contests. Got a clean bill of health from my doctor. Joined RWA. Bought cute sandals. Got a fabulous rejection letter. My husband and I went on two trips, and we will spend Labor Day weekend at Daughter # 2’s, where we will see Daughter #3, drink, eat lobster and dip in the pool and hot tub. Ah, the good life.
Like most people who work in a school system, I think of the new year starting in September rather than January, so it’s time for some resolutions. #1 on my list is to finish Paradise by December. Totally doable—only 20,000 words to go. Next on the agenda? After the dreaded synopsis and query letter, that is. This is where I need your help. Should I sleep with someone new? Pull the guy out from under the bed and work him over? Pick up the short guy and a couple of others and have a ménage a trois?
Just don’t tell my husband.
What was the highlight of your summer? What’s lined up for your school year?
As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away~Emily Dickinson
Aug 21, 2007
We have previously discussed my tea addiction, but I’ve recently discovered I’m also addicted to my homely Revereware tea kettle. Two have served me throughout my marriage, except for my brief fling with a yellow enamel thing that got tossed on the scrap heap long ago. I’m about to indulge myself with my third Revereware kettle, purchased not out of necessity but severe nostalgia and withdrawal.
A few weeks ago my husband noticed that the old kettle had lost its whistling ability. It didn’t matter to me. Usually I’m hanging out by the kitchen window watching the garden grow or the snow swirl while I wait for the water to boil. And I always snatch it off the stove before it goes into the earsplitting shriek mode anyway. Its inefficiency bothered him, however, and before I knew it, he’d thrown away the old one and got me something that was silver and whistled—but it’s just not right. The handle feels hot to me, the spout is tricky to open, and it’s just not right. It is probably more handsome than the Revereware design, which has always reminded me somehow of a ladybug, but I don’t like it. At all. So unbeknownst to my dearest husband, I am expecting a box from Amazon any day now. And then his new kettle will magically disappear.
Life is short. Everybody has something that they just have to have to make time on Earth more comfortable. Some simple thing. A cup of tea. A good book. I’ve recently discovered Carla Kelly’s backlist thanks to my MRMR visitors, and once I post this, I’ll be reading Miss Chartley’s Guided Tour and sipping some caffeine-free peach tea, which still tastes okay even if I had to use the nasty new tea kettle to brew it. What little thing do you just have to have to make things “just right?” Goldilocks and the bears below want to know.
Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity. ~Gustave Flaubert
Aug 19, 2007
The New York Times has an article today about the trend of new television shows to portray marriage in a rather dim light. After reading it, I’m almost tempted to turn on the TV. I’m not a TV snob; I just don’t watch it often. I’ve never seen an episode of
ER, pre-or-post George. The Tribe has not spoken to me. Ever since Katie Couric left the
Today Show I stopped watching, which used to be a tea-and-toast indulgence before I left for work. Sometimes I’ll catch a home improvement thing on BBC America. Last year I was addicted to Bravo’s
Project Runway and thought Santino should have won even if he was abrasive…and they made a dress out of plants…how cool was that? But I’m too antsy to sit still. Now, mind you, I can lie down on a bed with a book for
days.
But getting back to the article. The author Alessandra Stanley cites Scott Baio is Single…and 45, Mad Men, Californication and Tell Me You Love Me as being particularly gimlet-eyed when it comes to commitment, marriage and sex. And the latter is the problem—TV shows seem to indicate if you’re married, you’re not getting any. This is an old construct, from the twin beds of Ricky and Lucy to sad-sack Raymond begging Debra. They all must have had sex at some point though; there’s Little Ricky and the three baby Barones running around. But kids are big lust-killers. As a character from one of the above shows says, buying Cheerios isn’t hot.
There’s a reason romance novels end when they do. Real life tends to be less glossy, more messy. Alpha heroes may morph into Betas, or even Psi-chos. It’s hard to be insouciant when you’re scrubbing the toilet and wondering what to defrost. Partnership in real life requires constant compromise and balance, particularly for women. We’re expected to be domestic and dynamic in our jobs. Dirty in bed. Guys feel the pressure too.
Here’s Ms. Stanley’s chipper closing paragraph:
You’re born alone and die alone. Framed by silence, secrets and solitude, these modern relationships suggest you also love alone. It’s depressing to look too closely at the inner workings of any marriage. Viewers are advised to keep in mind that wedlock is a little like Churchill’s definition of democracy: an institution that is the worst, except for all the others.
Who are your favorite TV, book or movie married couples? Please tell me there actually is a Happily Ever After!
Aug 15, 2007
I’m having a little fun lately with a novella I’m writing for a contest. Never mind that I submitted an excerpt before I’ve even finished the story and now I have a whole different 750 words I should have sent. Regrets are regular but disregarded here at the Robinson Ranch.
My heroine in Spell Check is the unlucky victim of a magic spell gone awry. Her husband, in a quest for potency and progeny, blows himself up in 1789, leaving his widow to pick up the pieces, ha ha. She begins to get a little worried when she never gets any wrinkles, and spends the ensuing centuries trying to find a way to grow old gracefully. When she meets a hot guy who spends his days writing instruction manuals and his nights writing thrillers when he’s not thrilling her, she hopes to cast a spell on him.
When Juliet confesses all to Cade, he thinks she’s nuts. Slightly edited passage:
As she said one crazy thing after another, Cade had watched Juliet get paler until she was the color of the paper in front of him. He could tell she believed everything she said. If she was acting, she was way better than Meryl Streep and that Queen Elizabeth chick combined.
It was bad enough before when she threw a shoe at him. This timeline she’d just recited had wrapped around his throat and was choking him to death. He’d thought Juliet was a little quirky and original; now he guessed she was just plain insane.
“You don’t believe me,” she said in a flat voice.
He tried to smile. “It’s a little hard for me to understand, Julie. Are you saying you’re a witch or something? You don’t think you’re a vampire, do you?”
She gave a brittle laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous! Have I ever bitten you?”
Cade just looked at her.
“Well, apart from ordinary loveplay. A harmless nip here and there. I am not a vampire! In case you’ve forgotten, it’s daylight outside and I haven’t yet turned to ash. And I’m most certainly not a witch. Oh, no. I have absolutely no power. Do you think I’ve liked living through four centuries? I assure you, it’s very taxing keeping au courant. Just when I think I know the game, the rules change. And you must see how inconvenient it is for me to keep moving.” She framed her face with her hands. “No amount of plastic surgery could produce this result. While my friends become grandparents, I still look like the au pair.”
“So you’re not twenty-eight.” Cade looked at his watch. He needed to go. He was getting a headache and its name was Juliet. “Look, I can tell you’re sincere about this—”
“Read those papers, please. Read them and you’ll understand.”
He’d humor her, and then he’d get the hell out. He’d wasted a year of his life pining for a nutjob, a beautiful girl who thought she was going to live forever. Who said she was like some kind of Black Widow who killed her lovers. Maybe she really had whacked somebody. He probably should call the police. Or Social Services or something. He looked up to see her huge brown eyes, pleading with him to read the bullshit she’d written down on copier paper. She was the one who should be writing a novel. She had ten times the imagination he did.
Juliet has lived too long and seen too much. If you could trade places with her, what historical event in the past 250 years would you like to live through? Maybe I’ll stick it in the scene in Spell Check where Juliet proves to Cade she’s every bit as ancient as she claims!
Come out of the circle of time
And into the circle of love. ~Rumi
