Seductive or Repulsive?

You know you have a friend who picks terrible men. Disgusting, lying, cheating men. Maybe dangerous and abusive men. Sometimes these men don’t have the looks to use as an excuse. And you wonder what on earth does she see in him? Maybe he’s got a big…bank account or…something. It’s a mystery.

But romantic leads in our stories, well, their charms ought to be more evident. The reader should not be hitting the book against the bedpost and saying, “Oh, for crying out loud. Get a grip” when he walks into the scene.

He should be seductive, not repulsive. Not that we all agree on what seductive is. Some women think Heathcliff really is to die for, while some think him an obnoxious jerk. Romeo? A dagger in your heart for him? A leap into the river for Hamlet? Vronsky worth the train tracks? Well, at least no one had to die for Mr. Darcy.

My novel is not a romance. It doesn’t (spoiler alert) have a happy ending for one thing. In a romance, the lovers hate each other at first, and, we all know the drill, fall in love by the end. Ta-da! I’ve got nothing against that story if it is the one you want to tell, but this isn’t my kind of story. I prefer, for better or for worse, to write stories where the only one who gets the girl is herself. All the same, what’s a story without love?

So. My heroine must believe she loves this guy. Love and passion at first sight and then it all goes wrong. The reader ought to believe she isn’t stupid to be seduced by him, just perhaps foolhardy. There is a difference–to me anyway.

This first draft made this guy too creepy, and I’m trying to fix him up a bit and make him more presentable. But not dull. Charming, but not smarmy. Yes, perhaps a little out there, a hint of crazy, suggestions of maybe-this-guy-isn’t-what-he-seems, but not flat out weird. He asks her to do things way out of her comfort zone, and the reader may think she’s nuts to go along, but ought to believe her when she goes. He’s got to be crazy enough to do outrageous things and good enough for her stay with. She’s got to stay with him long enough for it to matter and for it to hurt to leave him–but make sense that she does.

If you happen to have any clue as to how to pull this off, leave that clue here.

(Honestly, I blame my friend, Jess, for this guy. She’s the one who gave him the name Zane–how could he not be crazy?)

Sharing, Sort of…

Sherri got me with this tag that tries to get us to learn more about each other. Usually sharing more about my life seems a tedious exercise because I don’t do much beyond stay in my own head and I worry that blogging encourages way too much self-obsession as it is, but I’m game to be tagged, and if anyone’s interested, they can read on.

Link one must be about family: my father who prefers not to know I write
Link two must be about friends: my poor neglected and used as material friends
Link three must be about yourself: seven random things
Link four must be about something you love: because I still love NaNo and my novel
Link five can be about anything you choose: and I chose this because very few days go by when my height is not pointed out to me

I really can’t bring myself to tag anyone, but I’m always happy to get to know others better out here in cyberspace. Please introduce yourself with this tag if you like.

Decent People Have Real Jobs…The Rest of Us Write

WordPress appears to have this new, odd feature of adding links to the bottom of posts. These links are supposed to be relevant, related, or in some way of interest to anyone reading the post. That remains to be seen. In theory it ought to do that improve-traffic thing, but that is a mixed blessing.

I don’t know how these other bloggers will feel about being linked to me (surprise!), but at least I’ve read a few things I wouldn’t have otherwise. Take, for instance, this. This blogger writes that a decent person wouldn’t want to be a writer or artist…well, go read it in context before you jump to any conclusions (lest you get too wet swimming back). But there’s a point–shouldn’t decent people get a real job?

I don’t know. Maybe being decent is overrated. And what exactly is a real job? I don’t know, but this blogger may well be spot on. What is decent about spending your life making stuff up when real people out there need real things like food, medicine, and shelter? Now, I happen to have a “real” job. I don’t get paid to spend my days wrapped blissfully in my own world. Oh well.

But I would if I could.

Maybe this means I’m as selfish and self-centered as my dad’s second wife always said.

It would help if I knew what a real job was. Feel free to let me know.

Bad Mothers

The mothers in my novel are terrible. A couple characters have good moms, but they’re not in this story. Part of me wonders why it is these women are so awful. Then again, part of me believes they fit the story, even though someone may accuse me of blaming moms or mom-hating or some such horror. To be fair, the fathers aren’t so great either. Overall, almost all the parents in my novels come across as less than ideal. Therapy might clear this up, but then I might write more boring characters.

Drink of the Gods and Great Women

When I was a girl, I believed my grandmother and my mom were the most amazing and brilliant people in the universe. Even when my own mother faltered or failed, when she didn’t, perhaps, mother very well, no one could compare. My mom told me that I should rebel, that I should talk back and roll my eyes, those things teenagers do. She said that was normal and healthy. But why would I do that? I never wanted to.

Mom and grandmother had a difficult relationship with problems I didn’t understand, but for all the anger between them they found time every weekend to sit together with cookies and cups of coffee. On weekends I got to see mom, I would sit with them with cookies and a cup of milk. When I grew up, I was going to drink coffee too. That’s how I would know I was a grown up–they’d give me coffee.

But when my mom finally gave in and let me take a sip of her coffee, I didn’t like it–much to her relief.

At 24 I joined the Peace Corps and spent two years in Bulgaria, and in the cafes and apartments of my Bulgarian friends I fell in love with coffee. I was a grown up! I could drink coffee with other grown ups–my husband, friends, and colleagues.

Mom and grandmother both died when I was 21. But I love my coffee even if I am a little late.

This was inspired by one of my favorite writers who shared a story about her own coffee spell.

The Rewrite Chronicles

Okay, I’ve gone with the plot change I’ve been obsessing over, and now I’ve got to cut out, oh, five chapters. That’s right. Gone, baby, gone. The surviving chapters will need such a serious rewrite that it makes most of the comments made by my one reader, well, beside the point. I paid good money for those comments, and I was damn happy to have them, but I have just rendered most of them useless.

Yes, a second opinion would be a grand thing, but this plot change really had to happen, and while I don’t regret paying money for comments that I don’t really need to read anymore, this whole process still makes me want to ram my head into a hard and sturdy surface.

(In a fit of writerly ego and insanity, I posted a picture of myself in the “about this writer” page, and, as if that weren’t enough, I posted chapter two in the now definitely overly burdened sidebar…)

The Rewrite Chronicles

If it takes such a long time to edit, you’d think the end product would be perfect–or damn near close. This is not the case.

I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time just trying to arrange characters in a room–and never mind getting a character out of a room. If more than two characters are talking, I enter pronoun hell. Her, she, her, she, her, she is running out of the room screaming while the others watch in shock.

(Anyway, the latest edit of chapter one is over there in the sidebar…another rewrite down, a hundred more to go.)

Sue, Ignore, or Invite to Dinner?

So, if you become a famous author and make more money than you can make sense of, and one of your fans gets carried away a writes books about your fictional universe, would you sue or shrug?

(This question, by the way, is inspired by the case in London between JK Rowling and a fan.)

Badgering–The Visualization Edition

Hey fellow writers!

Tonight I’ve got some free time. Real time without the kid or the husband. Wow. Think of all the things I could do to avoid writing! Organize my closet studio. Vacuum. Laundry. Go to the bookstore. Make phone calls. Write emails! So many good ways to avoid writing. After all, most of those things need to be done. (Yes, the bookstore is a need. It is!) But still I won’t be writing.

What about you? What are all the things you’re doing instead of writing? STOP! Life will go on unorganized. Your carpet doesn’t need to be vacuumed right now. You’ve got something else to wear and even if you do have to do laundry–what are you going to do while the clothes spin? The bookstore–only go there if you’re going to check where your book is going to go on the bookshelf. Yeah, why not? Where is your book going to be on the shelf? Who are the writers next to you? Just for some positive imagery, go and imagine pulling YOUR book off the shelf. Maybe that’s silly–but you gotta believe. What harm does it do?

But visualization aside, eventually you’ve got to sit down and write. It matters. You matter and your book matters and if I didn’t believe that I wouldn’t be writing this. Hey, I could be watching Doctor Who. Torchwood comes on soon, too, but all the gods as my witness, I’m going to be working on my novel.

You?

Let’s work together. And if it helps, check in. Let me know how far you’ve gotten. It doesn’t have to be far, but are you on track? How much more do you have to get done by Halloween? That day will be here before you know it.

Get writing.

There You Have It

“The advice ‘write only what you know’ increases the likelihood that you will know the same things forever.”

–Dennis A. Mahoney