My writing time is dwindling for the year, and I’m getting a little sad and nervous as I see it slowly disappearing. Sure I have excuses…the shopping, the lines, the errands, the cooking, the kids, the crafts, the gift-wrapping, the parties…but I’m in a zone in my writing right now, and I don’t really want to give in to them.

I accomplish most of my writing during my Mother’s Day Out free time and during those last few remaining naps I can squeeze out of my youngest. The “by-yourself” time I’ve instituted with my oldest is working just fine, but soon I’m going to have to introduce the concept to my youngest and work him around to it. That time has not yet arrived. Right now the calendar is my nemesis.

The holidays are approaching, and most of the time I would have used to write now must be used to accomplish little tasks I can’t perform with the kids along for the ride. Or else tasks that get done 90% quicker without them….

“No, we don’t have time to give the plastic grapes a squeeze today. Maybe next time.”
“We can’t watch the fish today; we’ll swing by the lobster tank in the grocery section instead.”

These last few weeks before Christmas (a whopping five), everybody is in a hurry, and contrary to the way it should be, everybody’s grumpy too. Not to mention pushy and rude. We all just need to relax a little.

We need to enjoy the holidays and not feel pressured. We need to find the time for projects we enjoy—projects for ourselves. Just a few minutes away from the hustle and bustle might give us the oomph we need to get through another afternoon of cooking or an evening of gift-wrapping.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it. I’m going to write everyday—even if it’s only for ten minutes—barring an unforeseen emergency development. And if I can’t, well then I’m not going worry about it. There’s always tomorrow. And I will write tomorrow.

Doesn’t the word ‘formula’ make you think of math? And science? Should it really be used to describe romance novels? I don’t think so, and I prefer not to think about romance in general in such terms, but it seems that’s the norm if you want to run with the heavyweights. (Here I’m referring to romance authors). I never would have realized this if I weren’t currently working on an article for the Romance Writers Report, but apparently a lot of romance authors got their start by dissecting the works of their favorite authors. I’m not simply referring to generalities, such as what kind of opening hooks work or what’s a good ratio of action to dialogue…I’m talking about detailed breakdowns.

How many pages before the heroine and hero cross paths?

Where exactly does the ‘Dark Moment’ fall in the grand scheme of things? And what is dramatic and significant enough to even be considered a ‘Dark Moment’.

Questions like these were answered and analyzed before some authors began their own projects. They absorbed their findings, tweaked them, and made them work in their own unique way. Maybe that’s what I should have done. As I mentioned in a previous post, I just wanted to write. I didn’t dissect my favorite romances. I knew what I liked was good writing, a spicy romance, a few surprises, great dialogue, and a sound storyline. So I just started. With more of that research I mention above, I probably could have improved the pacing, upped the action, eliminated some unnecessary bits, and dedicated more pages to secondary characters as I was writing. But at the same time, I think I would have gotten bogged down in the technicalities. After all, it’s hard enough to face a blank page everyday without referencing a spreadsheet to find out what should be happening, based on the formula.

I personally think chick-lit is exploring some fresh and inventive deviations. It seems like you’re not held so much to the formula if you write ‘women’s fiction’, whether it’s humorous, snarky, or totally serious. And I think that’s what makes chick-lit so interesting—you never know what’s going to happen. It doesn’t follow a formula, and sometimes it doesn’t even follow the rules! And yet it works.

But then again, sometimes you’re sacrificing the true romance, so that’s a definite trade-off.

Just took my boys to see Chicken Little, and despite being scandalized over spending $30 for tickets for the four of us, a medium popcorn and an ICEE, I really enjoyed the movie. Disney never fails to impress me. The story lines, I think, are always great, the animation is brilliant, the comedy is balanced for both adults and children, and the songs are fun and upbeat. This movie only had a few original songs that I noticed, but they were good. Instead they decided to use old favorites like I Will Survive, We Are The Champions, and Stayin’ Alive, which I thought worked well to bring in the older audience members. Relatively speaking.

I think this movie had great character development—all those barn animals were really three-dimensional. Plus, there was feel-good ending—even the alien invasion wasn’t as threatening as it appeared—and the clencher, a smidge of romance! How delightful…despite it’s being between a duck and a chicken. The point is, he could see past her limp, disheveled feathers and droopy eyes, and she could see past his accident-prone teensiness, and they made it work! At least until one of them molts and meets someone new…

All in all, I have to say, I’m rarely (if ever) disappointed in a Disney flick. Sure it’s a little much to pay for an hour and twenty minutes of cartoon antics, but if you pay attention, there’s enjoyment enough to be found in the often subtle humor hidden amid the much-used slap-stick, which I think, is actually funny in cartoons.

On a side note…whatever happened to those movies Disney used to make with the real-life actors paired with animation, like Pete’s Dragon, Mary Poppins, Chitty-Chitty, Bang-Bang? I thought those were very clever, and I would imagine they’d be considerably easy to engineer these days… I have to admit, I kinda miss them. Mary Poppins is a big favorite of mine.