Enigmatic Female

What I've Been Trying To Be Lately

A few weeks after we returned from our honeymoon, Dallas and I had a heart to heart talk about what I want to be when I grow up. For years and years, and years and years, I wanted to be a lawyer, and I still do, but it has not been easy to relocate professionally due to my lack of Texas law license (Novemeber 3rd, I'm told, will bring the results of the July Bar Exam). During our heart to heart, though, I began to see my break from work as more of an opportunity than a setback. As, it would seem, with most bloggers out there, I have aspirations of writing more than a website, and have been working diligently to that end for some time now. According to our calculations, we can make it without me working until Bar results come out and I get a permanent job (I previously thought I might temp or take something part time and low key in the meantime), so I've been working on writing full-time. As I didn't want to invest in the 2-3 creative writing classes the local colleges offer (I already have a BA in English with some writing thrown in), I've been pursuing my own curriculum that I've cobbled together from course listings, novels that have formed parts of my literary identity, books on writing written by successful authors, and the list goes on. I've been covering at least two books a day, as well as working through various writing exercises and working on my own writing projects. I am coming to the end of my compulsive reading and researching phase, though, as one of my projects is about to take off full steam.

I have been working on three different projects over the past month or so. The first is a children's mystery novel involving a precocious and unpopular 12 year old boy who is captivated by word games and physics. The second is a romance novel centered around a character who has old-fashioned sensibilities but modern ambitions (guess which career she leaves during the course of the novel to pursue a different life) that is evolving into a more literary novel as I work with it more and more. The third, and most unexpected, involves notebooks found by Dallas' father in the house of one of his cousins whose wife recently died. The notebooks were written in the 1950s by a woman who was born only 2 years after Laura Ingalls Wilder. She lived on the Texas frontier and has captured over a hundred pages of anecdotes from her childhood, as well as her married life. She was an early animal rights activists, as well as a quiet feminist. This project is the furthest behind, as I've not yet determined the best use for the notebooks. I've written an introductory chapter to a novel and a few short stories from the material she provided, but it needs to stew on the back burner until I get a better feel for it. All in all, it's quite an interesting time I've been having, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the various projects come out.

Deliciously Damp and Comparatively Chilly

I have never looked forward to fall the way I am looking forward to it this year. Then again, I've never lived through more than thirty consecutive days of over one hundred degree temperatures as I have this summer. The rain we've had for the past two Mondays has been a welcome relief for the cracked, brown ground, as much as for my dried out skin. These pictures were taken last Monday, when the rain came like an unexpected gift, providing me with an unseasonably cozy morning in which to drink tea, eat a few cookies, and write while looking out onto a beautiful gray sky that would have made me cringe in New York City, but which delighted me in Dallas.

Cat's Comment

My guy and I just broke up about 2 weeks ago, and you give me hope that I can come out on the other end.

Thank you for baring your soul...it has made mine not feel so lonely.

The first day of a creative writing class I took last year, my professor said, "We read to know we're not alone." He attributed this sage saying to someone or other, I forget whom. Then he expanded it, and the expansion made all the difference. He said, "We also write to know we're not alone." Shivers, goosebumps, certain knowledge that he was onto something crept up my arms and spine. Cat, your comment brings this all home for me. You really made my night. Thanks!

One small thing, you forgot to leave the link for your site and I so want to check it out.

A Bit Much

Perhaps my last post was a bit harsh in dropping the c-bomb all over the place. It's a word I rarely use and perhaps I was a bit drunk on the power of it. It's a very strong word. Even the way it sounds, with the strong "nt" sound  at the end, is very strong. It's like you can bark it at someone, it's so short and strong. I reserve use of this word for situations in which I feel someone is a rotten human being or have done something especially loathesome. Into this category falls Time Warner Cable as a general rule, with their monopolistic ways, complete lack of customer service, and their many many ways of misbilling you, overbilling you, or neglecting to be clear about exactly how much your service will cost. Using the c-word requires great provocation, as was the case yesterday, when someone treats you like a moron, gets upset that you just don't understand what they're telling you, and are giving you information that is flatly wrong. Now that the moment of greatest upset has passed, reading my last post makes me feel as if I crossed the line with my use of "the word." I won't take it down, though, as I felt the use of c*nt was warranted at the time and if I went around undoing what I've done in moments of hot emotion all the time, my life would be spent as a bottle of White Out or some giant pink eraser.

On Writing

I was in bed for 10 hours last night, of those I think I actually slept for about 4 of them. What was I doing for those other 6 hours??? Wouldn't that be telling!

I started out being pissed at myself for thinking too much, then I decided to go with it and see what I could come up with. Since I was reading a trashy "romance" novel before I turned out the light, I started wondering about whether romance novelists have a template from which to write. Kind of like one of those pull down menus where you select which type of hero you want. Some things aren't options though, they just come standard, like a manly physique, piercing eyes (you can pick the color), an engorged member, and tons of sexual prowess.

This got me thinking that the real reason women like these novels is that we are hard-pressed to actually find someone with these skills and need to live vicariously through the women in the book. Then it dawned on me. The real reason women read these books is that there isn't any good porn for women. Why isn't there any good porn for women? Women are supposed to be above looking at porn, so we need a subterfuge. When reading a "romance" novel we make up the images ourselves, and the little bit of plot flung in there between sex scenes makes us feel like we are legitimately enjoying literature (yeah right) that just happens to have some graphic "love" scenes. Trust me that it isn't because they are well written. Entertaining, certainly, but well written doesn't enter into it.

This got me back to thinking about what kind of template there is for romance novels, and why they don't teach this to English majors. It is certainly a more marketable skill than learning how to write an Italian sonnet in iambic pentameter. A class like that would be packed every semester, kind of a consolation prize for those people not lucky enough to experience the first hand prowess of drunken frat boy lovers.

Frat boy "lovers" (WHAT??). That thought alone was scary enough to keep me up for the rest of the night. THE HORROR!!