Happy Fourth of July!

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It is a gorgeous day in San Francisco, and while it's never clear whether the weather will hold, I've got my fingers crossed that there will be no fog to mar the fireworks tonight. I'm dragging myself down to the wharf in a few hours to go out on a boat with my visiting uncle, aunt, and cousin; barring any major weather-related problems, we should have a great view of the fireworks over the San Francisco Bay. I'm a confirmed Anglophile whose romance novels celebrate all things British, but on the Fourth I always take a moment to celebrate that we pulled one over on our mother country and won our independence. We may not have the fabulous traditions, the ancient castles, or the delicious accents, but I like to think that our dreams and our remarkably fluid society make up for our relative youth and brassiness. There are few countries in the world where a girl (shudder) from a rural farming community (double shudder) could escape a life of drudgery to attend an elite university and make a good living for herself. My path was eased by fantastic parents, but there were no real obstacles other than the limits of my own ambition, and for that I'm very grateful.

So, despite these "troubled economic times" and the various stresses and problems of the past few years, I still consider myself remarkably fortunate to have been born in America. I consider myself even more remarkably fortunate that my family and friends are so supportive of my dream of becoming a romance novelist, despite the challenges that I face along the way. And there's no better time to celebrate all of this than Independence Day.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone! What are you doing to celebrate?

Bloom Where You're Planted

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While my day job provides many benefits (such as a paycheck) and many frustrations (such as the sixty-plus-hour weekly commitment that pulls me away from my writing), what keeps me going back is my fabulous set of coworkers. I'm very lucky in that I actually enjoy seeing many of the people I work with; there are always the occasional people whom I avoid when I see them walking down the hall, but they are far outnumbered by the people whom I would gladly sacrifice ten minutes of precious worktime to catch up with.

I had a meeting today with one of my direct reports, and the meeting reminded me just how lucky I am to work with these people, and even more importantly how much I just need to figure out how to balance the job and the writing and not get frustrated when either one is not going exactly right. The person I met with was an officer in Iraq and served two tours before leaving the Army and going into the private sector. As we were talking, he mentioned something that his grandmother told him before he left for Iraq -- that it was important to "bloom where you're planted." Isn't that excellent advice? Regardless of whatever situation you end up in, you can still strive to bloom in it.

This is far sappier than I usually get, so I apologize for the uncharacteristic lapse. I will be back to my regularly scheduled snark tomorrow!

I Love Me Some Star Trek

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I didn't expect to love "Star Trek" quite as much as I did, but it had the perfect blend of action, comedy, and character development to kick off the summer movie-going season. And quite unexpectedly, this is the only movie I can remember in which I cried in the first ten minutes.

And if nothing else, I have a new inspiration for my bad-boy heroes -- Chris Pine as Captain Kirk is fabulous! Check him out below...

A Three-Day Weekend Awaits

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I'm taking tomorrow off, and not a moment too soon -- while I did manage to work on the rewrites for MARRIAGE on Monday and Tuesday, I failed in my efforts yesterday and today. I can't let my progress stall; the Golden Heart nomination is a huge opportunity, but I'm not comfortable querying with what I have because I'm convinced that I need to rewrite a couple of chapters. Since my day-job boss is in town next week, my evenings are going to be booked up, and so progress this weekend is critical.

Meanwhile, I keep watching the video of Susan Boyle's performance of "I Dreamed a Dream" on "Britain's Got Talent." I'm a total sucker for underdogs, and her appearance and general demeanor made her the ultimate underdog; everyone in the audience was sure that this was going to be one of those cringe-worthy trainwrecks that happen in the early rounds of talent competitions. Instead, she performed "I Dreamed a Dream" so well that it's gotten over fifteen *million* views on YouTube in less than a week, and pushed the original Broadway recording of the song back onto the Top 40 charts. How incredible is that? If I never sell my books, perhaps I'll go on a variety show in twenty years and attempt to do a dramatized reading of one of my scenes, although I doubt that's the best way to break into publishing.

It's bedtime; tomorrow, I have to drop my car off to get serviced, and then I'm going to seek out a cafe and write the rest of the day. What are your plans for the weekend?

On the "Hero's Journey" in Books and Film

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Several months ago, I picked up a copy of Christopher Vogler's THE WRITER'S JOURNEY: MYTHIC STRUCTURE FOR WRITERS. While the fact that he managed to use 'writer' twice in the title was indicative of his generally weak writing style, I thought it was an interesting look at how stories are formed using common archetypes and story arcs. He draws heavily on his experience as a screenwriter to demonstrate how most stories -- particularly blockbusters like action, fantasy, and romantic comedy -- follow a familiar cycle in which the hero/heroine goes off on a quest and must find their own holy grail before returning to their known world.

This all seems quite obvious and not worth the $17.79 that the book currently runs on Amazon (full retail is $26.95, which is steep for a paperback). However, I recently reread it, and as I've watched movies and read books over the last few days, I have been struck by how accurate his analysis was. Between yesterday and today, I watched BRUCE ALMIGHTY and FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL and read THE GRAVEYARD BOOK by Neil Gaiman (which I shall review sometime soon). While the stories were quite different -- man at a crossroads dealing with faith issues in a comedic manner, man on a mission to forget his ex and find love with the new girl, and small boy raised in a graveyard until he can take revenge on his family's killer -- all three of them had structures that adhered closely to Vogler's analysis of the ideal story framework.

What I find interesting about writing romance is that there is such a clearly defined set of rules for the genre -- particularly for historicals, the hero and heroine can't be involved with other people while involved with each other, the story must explore two people falling in love, and the story must end with the hero and heroine either married or engaged (almost always married). The challenge is to take a set of rules and write a story that adheres to the strictures while still feeling fresh and original. The rules provide a form that sets the reader up to be pleased and prepares them for a happy ending -- but the writer must get to that happy ending through several hundred pages that create doubt about the ending and provide the reader with a satisfying emotional journey as the hero/heroine grow through the power of love.

This is all a lovely challenge for me; when I started writing AN INCONVENIENT MARRIAGE, I only had the first section and the last mapped out. The rest all came to me while I worked through the manuscript, resulting in extensive rewriting during the second draft to fit all the pieces together. But as I begin to plot out book number two, I think THE WRITER'S JOURNEY could at least help me to set things up in a slightly more unified way, even if the process of writing itself will still lead to a massive overhaul after I finish the first draft.

I'll keep discussing craft and storytelling as I begin work on book number two. Meanwhile, what's your favorite story? What do you love about it?

Inspirations - "Patterns" by Amy Lowell

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I read this poem as part of a literature correspondence course in high school, and it came to mind the other night as I was writing Amelia's first scene. While the poem itself was written one hundred years after Amelia lived, the general sentiment of women trapped in rigid patterns remained the same.

For me, one of the reasons that I read romance is that, even though the genre itself is perhaps a familiar pattern, I'm always eager to see heroes and heroines breaking the rules and creating their own lives. Historicals, and particularly Regency historicals, set up this conflict beautifully -- in contemporaries, there are fewer well-known societal rules, and so there are fewer rules to break. Since books are a form of escape, I would rather see societal conflict that is superficially unrelated to my own life, instead of contemporary stories about women trying to juggle careers and families. Then again, Amelia is in essence struggling with that same issue -- but seeing it in a different time period removes it slightly and gives the reader a chance to view it from a fresh perspective.

Here's the poem:

PATTERNS
Amy Lowell
I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.
And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.
I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles
on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon --
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.
Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam," said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.
In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.
In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

What do you think? Why do you read romance?