I went to an advanced WordPress class today–even took the whole day off of work to do it. (Go Miranda!) I managed to understand why I have had both a “Home” and “Scribblings” page forever. I’m still not quite sure how to address some of the things I want to do with sidebars, but having a stronger conceptual sense of how Wordpress works gives me a much clearer idea of how to tackle that one.
I’m expecting things to be quiet on the blog while I balance the Discovering Story Magic master class and Margie Lawson’s ECE over the next couple of week. (Shhh! Miranda is thinking . . . . Not that there’s normally much of a ruckus in here, mind you.)
During that time, you can imagine me kicking back in the fabulous new chair adorning my office (upholstered in a different fabric that that shown, but this captures its gorgeous lines):
Saw these on Smart Bitches and couldn’t get enough. I’m archiving these here for my own future fun.
Another branch of my craft reading has been glomming onto all things Helen Fields has written. Jenny Crusie turned me onto her back during the 2007 novel writing workshop. Dr. Fields studies the brain chemistry of love, and she has so many good things to say I can’t begin to summarize them here. But one of her discoveries is just pins down the essence of love for me, so I’ll describe it here. She identifies romantic love, that euphoric, obsessive, soul-drenching experience when you first fall in love, as a primal human drive for mate selection. It’s like thirst or hunger. Once you fall in love, that’s it. That’s all you can think about or do until you realize that relationship. And when that relationship isn’t consummated or worse, the object of your affection rejects you, your brain pretty much freaks out because it’s been so used to the “high” that being in love has given you.
My WIP features a relationship where the heroine rejected the hero ten years earlier, and Fields’ observations about what actually happens to a person in this circumstance ring are incredible. To find out, you’ll have to read what I do to my poor hero.
So I fall in the camp of someone who was diappointed in Twilight the book. And now I guess I’m diappointed in the movie, too, but it suffered from the same flaws as the book, so there’s not much to be done about it.
I loved Meyer’s first-person voice and her ability to recapture high school. That, was by far the strongest part of the book. This article in the Atlantic is right on in my view:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/twilight-vampires
My main gripe with Twilight is that there’s no romantic tension.
Girl meets vampire. Vampire and girl fall in love. Bad guy tries to get girl. Vampire saves girl. The End.
Hello? Where is the step where the girl says, holy f*ck, you’re a vampire? What about the step where the girl makes some attempt to resist falling in love with something that wants to eat her? What does the vampire do to earn the girl’s love? What about the step where the vampire thinks he succeeded but screws up and must win then back affection of the girl?
Maybe I’m just too staid a romance reader with expectations about what I see in the romance genre, but come on aren’t these just basic steps in writing dramatic tension?