Tag: romance

When Romance Takes Over

~ JodiLea ~ 2 Comments

It, my book, started out fine. Things were flowing according to my master  Cherubsoutline and I kept writing and writing.   Then my main characters start falling in love. Dammit! Romance always gets me off topic, ignoring the Big Picture.

This happens in almost all of my fiction. Both novels and short stories. When I was a kid (I started writing when I was in grade-school), I wrote what I called ‘corny’ stories. Oh Lord, were they ever mushy girl stuff! Very fun to write, but the only person interested in reading them was me and my BFF who also loved to write mushy, corny stories that I enjoyed reading.

My mom would nag us to go outside and play. She thought we were very strange little girls who wanted to sit indoors at the kitchen table and write, when it was summer break and we were in sunny California.

Writing good love scenes requires imagination and a sense of fun. The amount of boyfriends or experience you’ve acquired, won’t help you write romance better. Unless you are going for the hot steamy details.

BFF and I were 11-year old girls, yet our love scenes were very tender and romantic. We didn’t need pornish* details. We were only interested in the romance. As we wrote about their first touch or their first kiss, we played out the scene in our heads, trying to feel what they were feeling.

Although we spent most of our time plotting romance, these stories were not “Romances” in the Harlequin sense. They were mysteries, thrillers, history and comedy all rolled up in one story or in separate stories.

When I return to work on my current book I should put the romance on the back burner and keep up with my research and the main story line. To stay on track with this project. I really, really want to do that!

Then again, I need a lot of romance in my life to stay happy. 😉

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*Pornish [poor-nish]; adverb. When something has too much erotic detail.
– taken from the “Words That Should Exist Dictionary“

It’s Valentine’s Day. Again!

~ JodiLea

It all starts when you’re a kid. You bring a shoebox to school and make a Valentine Mail Box.  Your shoebox gets wrapped up in fancy paper and decorated the way you like. Then you make a slit in the very top so valentines can be “mailed” to you. Your mom buys you a package of 30 valentines and you spend hours at the kitchen table addressing them to the kids in your class. Even kids you don’t like will get a valentine from you (and you from them).

On the big day I could not wait to run home and open my valentines. Hoping that John or Roy or some boy wrote me a special note inside their valentine to me. Never happened. Not even once.

Why have I not learned from this? Each year I revert back to that little girl surrounded by torn open valentines, and heartbroken. I know it will happen again this year – just like last year and the 45 years before that. Tonight is Feb. 13th and I am feeling  sad in advance. I know that is ridiculous, but it’s who I am.

Deep down in my soul, where reality is overruled by feeling, there is a glimmer of  hope. No amount of  pessimism, intelligence or giving myself a good talking to, can sway it.  The  “just maybe” part of me keeps longing for a passionate, romantic outpouring of adoration from the man I love. On Valentine’s Day.

I get the fact that Valentine’s Day means nothing to 99% of the male population. So??  It does mean something extremely important to your woman. Some effort on your part for one freaking day of the year, is all we’re asking. Don’t give us that crap about “I didn’t know what to get you”. Have you ever seen a movie that had a leading man and woman in it? Do you watch television?

Valentine’s Day is not like President’s Day. It is on the same damn day every year. February 14th.  Shame on you for pretending you did not know when Valentine’s Day was. You know who you are.

Here’s some free advice:  On the list of things we would like to get from our men on Valentine’s Day,  “Nothing”  is not one of them.