The Twilight of my Career as a Romantic Novelist

Having endured one book of the Twilight series and meandered around the local book store looking at scores and scores of Vampire and Werewolf and Zombie romances designed to quench the thirst for netherworld relationships in tweens and teens and people who should know better, I have come to a few conclusions about the modern literary world at least with respect to this sort of purchase.  Forgive me if you love the stuff, my internal snark needed some exercise.

10) Readers want an other worldly romance.  Whether the mysterious man is from New Zealand, Bermuda or the third dimension, the male must carry with him in the very air, a whiff of the unknown, the powerful, the culturally greater that comes from anywhere but here.  With the world wide web, the wide world is no longer as exotic as it once was.  Hence, writers must craft a whole host of new places and cultures to create that spicy otherness so necessary for the romance novella of today.

9) Sex, whether desired or achieved, is passionate, defining, all consuming and beyond.  Like the Greek myths of yore, the sparkling experience of those singular moments whether in Wicked or in Bridges of Madison County, have permanent marks on the women who experience them.  Every sacrifice, gift, memory, joy and act of devotion by any other human, man, woman or child pales in comparison and nothing that comes afterwards compares either.  It's sort of a one shot deal.  But apparently, what a one shot. 

8)  Money is never an issue.  Even if it was before, it isn't now.  Careers are reworked to be dashing and more viable and important as a result of the defining relationship. (Bridget Jones)  Cars that were troublesome and difficult become a source of humor and intimacy and then eventually get replaced by the largess of the lover either anonymously or as a farewell romantic gesture sort of thing.  I broke up with a guy once.  I got a good bye and I know we'll still be friends letter.  No car, not even a hot wheel. Maybe you have to be undead to do that sort of stuff.

7) Girls don't actually have to do anything, they can just emote across the page and the men apparently find this irresistible.   I knew women like this in graduate school.  They seem perpetually puzzled when men weren't sniffing at them like felines under the spell of catnip.  Speaking as a grown woman, ewwwwww. 

6) School like money and work serves only as a backdrop for painting in character traits about the feme fatale and the prospective hottie hunky.  The formula works similar to a Bond movie.  If the woman likes science, the audience or reader thinks "Oh, she is smart."  If the woman is painting, the reader/audience understands, she is a talented artist on the cusp of being something great.   If the lady quotes Shakespeare or plays a cello, her gifts speak to the hero's soul, piercing his carefully protected psyche with her earnest love of beauty.   No actual tests of scholarship, study, craft or art need be created, it's simply implied.  Once the eyes meet and everything that was empty suddenly isn't, the environment becomes empathetic with the protagonist heroine.  The weather and the moors collaborate to become a physical mood ring for the reader just in case anyone was unclear on what was happening internally.  

5) Every romance needs a subplot and usually it's a threat to the romance itself.  A protective father, a jealous ex, a needy family, Dr. Van Helsig, whathaveyou, has to prevent the defining moment of passion from happening too soon. That something will be framed somewhere between misguided and out and out diabolical.  Evil vampires and angry Capulets are cut from the same cloth.  The hero and heroine will prove their worth to each other via triumphing over these exterior obstacles while revealing internal desirable traits to each other in momentary spurts of creativity, courage, pluck and determination.  Of course the persuing enemies of the romance will eventually wind up thwarted by a combination of the couple's skills.

4) Guys have companions, fellow friends and an understanding family.  The girl usually comes alone or with a family with issues which squelch her true beauty and being.  The man and his family become her world, her dowry, her source of all meaning.  The girlfriends that were once inseparable, become backdrop to be given short shrift.  The family receives her pink slip from the indentured servitude she suffered under their demands.  Sure these characters may complain and even wind up conspiring with angry mobs or vampires ratting out the romantic duo in a fit of peevish revenge or mistaken parental protectiveness, but their secondary status is a permanent consequence of the relationship.

3)  The Rule of Three: one girl, two guys.  One she is fated to marry, one she loves or one she should love and another who compels her beyond her brain's capacity to reason to ignore everyone and everything else.  The guys verbally spar, one up in courtship and eventually physically fight.  The outcome is only in doubt in the dim bulbed heroine's brain. After all, she only emotes, she doesn't actually think.   Team Jacob Team Edward....Guys....Bella?  She's not all that.  

2) Romantic fight. You knew this was coming right? I mean, it can't be pure lovey dovey all the time. To have passion, one must have conflict that simmers, smolders, sparks and smokes. So we have the opposites attract scenario and the great philosophical exposition of opposing values that must be reconciled for the couple to endure. It's very dramatic and usually involves prejudices that must be torn down and misperceptions that can be easily explained away if one or the other would simply listen and the fateful final decision that sends one suitor packing unless they come back to exact revenge in which case packing takes on a whole new meaning. It is usually consummated in either the ground breaking sex or the ground breaking break up or ground breaking tragic death like in Titanic.


1) And the number one truth I've uncovered from thumbing through the various tomes available for your reading pleasure this summer:  I'm doomed as a romantic novelist.

7 Quick Takes

1. Eats, Shoots and Leaves

I'm reading this wonderfully witty book by Lynne Truss right now.  Why?  I know I get sloppy with my punctuation.  I know I suffer from excessive commaitis and the desire to use dashes like salt on popcorn.  The AP manual is excellent if you have a specific question but if you don't see your own mistakes, it's hard to use as a reference.  At least this way, I'm laughing while I'm going through a quick refresher on all that stuff I considered utterly boring back in grade school.   Even the slogan is wonderful, "Sticklers unite, you have nothing to lose but your sense of proportion, and arguably you didn't have a lot of that to begin with."  I could nit pick and point out she ended a sentence with a preposition. That's a no-no.  However, it's still a very fun read. 

2. 20 Year Tape

This year is our 20 year anniversary. The video of our wedding needs to be transferred to a more permanent medium. I think I know what I'm giving us for our anniversary. Every year we sit and watch the tape; though sometimes separately because we've had to tag team for the kids --two universaries when we were watching kiddos at the hospital, such that while we both saw the tape, it was at opposite ends of the day and alone. I remember our first walk, our first kiss, our first words, our first impressions of each other, and look forward to celebrating many many more decades.

3. Is it just me?

This year I've seen more butterflies than ever before.  I wonder if I just was not seeing them or if in fact for some reason there are more.  Wondering if anyone else has noticed this phenomena.

4.  Why is it?

My brother comes over and cooks a sauce; the same stuff I cook all the time.  The kids devour it.  I cook the sauce.  The kids want anything but what I'm serving.  Think I'll tell them different people came over and fixed dinner when they weren't looking from now on and see if packaging and the right sponsorship makes a difference in appetites.  I'm willing to be a ghost chef if they actually eat.  

 5. Driving me Nuts

I've lost one day's worth of mail.  I don't know what it was.  I don't know if there were any bills. I can't find any missing but I also just don't know what came.  My daughter brought up the stack and put it on the table and no one has seen it since.  Prayers to Saint Anthony would be appreciated.  On the bright side, it has helped me clean out a lot of junk from my cubbies full of stuff. 

6.  Fixing his little red wagon

It's not a joke or a threat, it's a fact.  For three days, my son has been on me to build his radio flyer and for three days, I've put it off in part because of timing, lack of the proper tools and the rest of the day taking over, and because I'm engineering impaired.  Today, I put down the laptop and pick up the pliers and screwdriver.  That poor boy does not know how mechanic free my fingers are; but he will learn soon enough.  Here's hoping the thing is operationally functional when I get done.  

7. The Next Food Network Star

My kids and I love the show except for the gratuitous swearing that seems to be constant; I've had to limit who can watch.  We have a beef however with the creators who ran a contest where the would be cooks had to create dinner in 20 minutes using cereals to simulate the stress of busy moms.  The problem with the concept was what the chefs cooked.  The meals they presented would be rejected by virtually every child in America.  Two examples of the cuisine were tuna encrusted with rice krispies and Quinoa All Bran.  I'm thinking "Oh yeah. My six year old can't wait to dig in to that one."  Here's what a busy mom would do folks if all they had was breakfast stuff.  They'd take the cereal, put it in a bowl and add milk.  If they wanted extra nutrition, they might cut up banana.  Dinner in five minutes.  Tadah! 

  

The Tenth Time Around

When I was pregnant with my first, I swore up and down that I intended to work after he was born.  After all, I'd pressed hard to get my master's and these students needed me.  The daycare was just adjacent to my school which was catty corner from our apartment and next to the gym and the bank.  What could be more perfect?  I'd teach from 7:30 to 3 and pick him up by 4 and spend the afternoon with him and everything would be fine.  

Then I went to visit the daycare.  It was run out of a Church, like a little school for babies.  I was taken to see each of the rooms. They were clean and quiet.  I watched as two women with buttery soft hands picked up two of the crying 1 year old children, changed them and rocked them into peaceful sleep.  The director showed me the toddler room with happy kiddos finger painting and giggling and the fours room where they were listening to a story.  There was a fenced in playground with newfangled cork instead of mulch for a floor and a pet bunny in a hutch near the 0-6 months room.  It seemed perfect. Then we walked into the room where my son would spend his first few months.

There was a four month old baby boy.  I don't know the kid's name but he was dressed in baby blue and in a bouncer.  When he saw me, his bright blue eyes lit up and he smiled and squirmed and kicked with pleasure as if nothing would ever please him more than for me to have walked into that room.  Those smiles burned into my brain.  I didn't want someone else seeing my kid's smiles, they were my smiles to see.  I felt like a thief capturing this kid's smiles that belonged to some other mommy not seeing them. 

I know it was the hormones but I immediately found a payphone.  (It was 1993, no cells.)   Sobbing hysterically to my very perplexed husband on the phone I announced, "I sob...don't care..sob sob sob...if we can't..sob sob sob sob....afford it....sob sob sob....I'm staying home!"  To which my beloved could only respond, "Okay honey. Okay...calm down....that's fine. You can do that.  I love you."

I'd love to tell you I made my peace with being a SAHM right then and there but it wouldn't be true.  The dreams of ambitious alternatives crept back into my head almost as soon as I was six weeks post-partum.  It wasn't that I didn't love my son; but that sitting at home felt like standing still when the rest of the world was spinning forward at breakneck speed. 

Walking the neighborhood pushing a stroller, desperate for company, I became friends with the dry cleaner, the pharmacist, the receptionist at our apartment complex and the woman who worked the 1 hour photo place.  Unable to manage the long hours that felt like nothing was happening, I threw myself into a project and spent the second half of my son's first year trying to get into graduate school.  After six months of pure madness in a PhD program, we moved to Maryland because of work and I had to start over.

The isolation I'd felt when I first came home with a baby returned as I now was a stranger in a strange state with no family, no friends and no idea of where anyone or anything was.  I tried graduate school again but it faltered even as I started.  I became pregnant with my first daughter.  I pressed on trying to weld my new home, my new role and my dreamed life and ambitions together.  It was doomed. My graduate program was a fight in every class.  I pressed on but tried switching advisors and then programs and got stuck with an advisor that really didn't get me or I him. 

When I got pregnant with my third child, he asked if I was serious about my doctorate.   The feminist in me flared a bit.  "If I want to have ten children and a Ph.D. what does it matter?"   He asked me if I was going to have ten children.  I said "I don't know."  and we sort of agreed not to bring it up again but it was a break in my drive because he and I knew I meant that if it happened, it happened.    

That Christmas, after struggling to finish two papers, things came to a critical mass.  While waiting for an epidural, I struggled to provide a critique over the phone to a member of a team assessment for a class. It was too much and I threw in the towel.  But I told myself, it will happen one day, even if I have to go across using a walker, when that happens, I'll have one heck of a cheering section.   Don't quote me the a dream deferred bit because I look at the life I have and it is a greater dream than I'd imagined; and I haven't despaired that God doesn't have still more for me to do than I can imagine.

With three, I sort of settled into the role but I've had flare ups of ambition and ego and desire and drive as we faced more and more and more.  It's resulted in taking on more than I can chew on more than one occasion, it started me once upon a time working from home for the school, it started me writing, it started me doing grants and working on a book and running the carnival at the school.

Part of me sometimes chafed at year12, 15, 17 of still changing diapers and asked when do I get a crack at things or has that already passed?  When the laundry and the dishes and the beds and the toys seem to cascade out of every pore of the house and I've done shoes and haircuts and dinner at the fast food restaurant of choice and still the first thing when we get home is, "You didn't....."  I've felt like bleah.  Why am I pushing this rock up the hill yet again? The world ran by and I didn't catch it and once upon a time, I could have. It isn't often, but it isn't absent.  We always long to be more, and some of that longing is for being closer to God, and some of it isn't.  We always long to be loved; we don't always long to be loving.

But God knows that even those little dark spots are just my stubbornness and He's very very good at wearing away any stony attempts by my heart to say yes to something other than Him.  Every child has been different, they all demand different more of me; some of them know more than me; some of them love more easily than me; some of them have natural reverence and others have natural gifts of simple obedience or humility, and still others, natural understanding of how to limit one's appetites without limiting drive or desire to do well; and others, default set themselves to joyful.  They all have these virtues that reflect back at me how I'm supposed to be and they all require constant study, constant review and constant love.   So I'm facing year 18 and a newborn. 

Cleaning out the library --one of the pits of stacks of stuff included old journals.  My words with one and with three and with four and with five and seven all echoed each other.  I knew I had the same thoughts with the other ones too, I just didn't always write it down or in the same journal.  With every one of these children, my first response has been to be fearful; how can I manage?  How will I manage?  The I of course was part of the problem, also the idea that I had to manage when what I was called to do was love.  

But now we are expecting our tenth, and the sublime experience of this tenth, is what I suspect less stubborn (more wise) other mothers experience much sooner; it is perhaps why I needed this tenth child.

I know I will have one in diapers and one in college.  It's a reality.  But for the first time, my first response was not fear or how will I manage or there goes three more years I have to wait for me, it was Okay.  This is good.  This little girl (my guts say a girl and thus far, they are 9 for 9 right on the money), she's awesome.   I really can't wait.  I'm impatient for Christmas and this pregnancy is one long Advent.

I hope I can hold onto this wisdom the whole pregnancy, so many times I'll get a snatch from the mass or the readings of the day or from reading or listening to friends and family and then some part of reality, the news, errands, unexpected chores or fight or extra pounds or telemarketers irritate and I lose hold of it.  The wisdom just floats out of my brain with respect to application as I chatter and flail and bluster and worry.    That's why I'm writing it down and sharing it, so others will remind me when I feel overwhelmed or overtired or overtaxed that the long journey across the desert to the stable began long before the night Christ was born, and to stay staring at that star and be as constant as the kings.