Monthly Archives: June 2010

love

so this post has been inevitable for a while. A big, rambly meditation on capital-L love. Er, Love.

I’ve been trying to hold off, because I have no idea how all my various thoughts on the subject are going to get down on the page without a bit of push and shove and an indecent amount of fervour. But I just watched the film Dear John – another Nicholas Sparks creation – and it’s caused precipitation.

So. Love.

The film doesn’t have a happily-ever-after moment. But what it does is perfectly capture the irrational nature of love. The way it profoundly interrupts a life, even after such a short time, and never goes away.

Come on, maybe you don’t admit it to other people, but think about it: You still love the first person you ever felt that for, right? The first person who made just breathing and looking and talking incandescent. Loving them still is not a rational act and it probably has nothing to do with who you are now, who they are now, what your life is now, whether you even still know them. It has nothing to do with having any kind of future together. When you fell in love part of you was irrevocably transformed and thought, Forever, no matter what.

I also watched the BBC adaptation of Love in a Cold Climate the other day, and was very taken with the last line.

Fanny: Fabrice was the great love of her life.

The Bolter: Ah yes, they always are. Every time.

To me this is the unanswerable question at the heart of a romance novel. It took me a while to figure it out, because of course we already know how the story will end before we even start writing, so what is there to discover by writing it?

Every time I set myself this challenge: Can two people really find each other and think, Yes, you, to the exclusion of all others, always. And can it be true?

I don’t have an answer to that, by the way, which is why it’s the unanswerable question.

When me and special k got engaged I was terrified for two weeks. How could I possibly say I would love this person for my whole life? Then I thought about it like this:

When we met – ok, the second time we met, something sparked between us. Something irrational if you think about it, because we really didn’t know each other at all. I think trying to know and understand and empathise with and support each other are all immensely important aspects of commitment, but that spark - that is absolutely necessary to the in love kind of love. So because it had nothing to do with who either of us happened to be at the time, I figured: Whoever I am at any given moment loves whoever you are at any given moment.

It’s the irrational, forever, irrevocable and slightly insane aspect of love.

And the best (scariest) part is that you can’t control it. As soon as you try horrible things happen like doubts and anxiety and “you’re not the man I married.” It’s bloody hard to let go of, too.

It’s like admitting Santa Claus exists. You’re allowing for the possibility that love is slightly magical and beyond you and that it can do and be anything at all.

Which reminds me of this thought about Love:

Most people long for it, pretty desperately if we’re honest. But a rational society like ours doesn’t like to admit that one of the highest attainments in life is something so illogical and irrational. It’s pretty astounding what we would be prepared to do for Love. For something that is so unquantifiable and so infinitely precious.

(This is one of the reasons I think people are condescending about romance fiction. It just goes ahead and says love is important – and not in an ironic way.)

But if you think about it, it makes no sense at all that instead of nothing there is life, either. When we love we feel stupidly alive.

Irrational + irrational = bliss

One last thought:

Love is one of the most deeply transformative experiences we have in our lives. I read in an essay a while ago, whose author I’ve since forgotten, that Love is the only power on earth that can make Romeo and Juliet blind to prejudice, hatred, vengeance etc. It overcomes obstacles that almost anything else in life cannot. (Okay, so it didn’t end very well, but you get the point.)

I think a line from the film Valentine’s Day sums it up best:

Love is the only shocking act left on the planet.

lessons in vulnerability

In my last post I applauded Gaelen Foley for her brilliant use of vulnerability. I’ve read on since then and somehow an incredibly promising book just sort of fizzled out. So I want to explore how she used and abused the vulnerability card and see what can be learnt from it as a writer.

what worked:

Our hero, Billy Blade, is a dangerous and dangerously intelligent gang leader in the rookeries of London. He ran away from his aristocratic home at the age of 13 because his father regularly beat him up and made him feel that he was worthless and unlovable.

What I would expect from a hero like this is that he’s morbidly suspicious of anything tender he might feel for someone else. But Foley allows Blade an immediate and yearning vulnerability. He longs for a less desperate life, for Jacinda Knight, and for the possibility that she just might like him.

This immediately endeared him to me. It made me realise I feel a little bit contemptuous of heroes who are so woefully stupid when it comes to their own feelings. And when Blade returns to sophisticated London and braves the contempt of his fashionable peers just to be near Jacinda, he becomes even more endearing. He was powerful and potent in the rookeries but his vulnerability turns him into something of a beta-hero, or the out-of-place underdog.

(That being said, I think you can also make it work to have a hero so distrustful that he obstinately refuses to understand his feelings. Loretta Chase’s Lord of Scoundrels is a brilliant example of this. Her hero won’t admit how he feels, but he is undone and made vulnerable nonetheless.)

what didn’t work:

I’ve thought about it quite a bit and come to the conclusion that the story fizzled because Blade gave in too absolutely to his vulnerability. He follows Jacinda back into society, and because he is so desperate to be with her and to be worthy of her, he submits to her attempts to civilize him and becomes the perfect gentleman.

In doing this he was following his secret yearnings/longings, but as a character he became indistinct and, dare I say it about what was an enormous character, boring.

In the last few chapters he redeems himself somewhat, bringing the two sides of himself into accordance with each other. But by that time I didn’t care as much, so it was a bit lost on me.

So annoying! I was 100% with them at the beginning.

Vulnerability works so well to create an interesting character. It complicates them; it divides how they perceive the world and how they act from what they really desire/fear; it makes them unpredictable; it makes them human.

But I think it only works in glimpses. Think about how you feel without your defenses. It’s incredibly powerful to be vulnerable, but also damn uncomfortable and not, I think, sustainable over long periods. We have certain defenses for a reason, and I think it’s important to know when it’s more dramatic to use the power of defenses or of vulnerability.

Also, those defenses we build that come to define who we are are what gives character.

erm, and the lesson?

What I take from this as a writer is that vulnerability needs to be used in the way I imagine painters use highlights or those certain colours you don’t even necessarily notice in a painting that bring out everything else more vividly. I think that if a character is too comfortable with being open and vulnerable for prolonged periods, or if their life comes too perfectly into line with their secret fears/desires, they become unbelievable or at least they lose all dramatic interest.

It could be useful to think about what you want a character to achieve/feel in any given scene and whether being powerful or powerless serves this, and whether that feeling comes from vulnerability or from long-held defenses.

every romantic hero is a superhero; every superhero has his kryptonite

One of the things I love about romance fiction – and I think it’s true for most genre fiction – is that the protagonists are superheroes. That includes the women, by the way, I just thought that “every romantic hero/ine is a superhero/ine; every superhero/in has his/her kryptonite” didn’t make for a catchy title.

Each character is absolute in their own specific way and it makes them infinitely powerful. Take Edward Cullen, the hugely popular romantic hero: his vampire nature is as unchanging as the granite his body resembles, so when he makes the great shift of falling in love with Bella it is absolute and forever. And, not only will his love for her never abate, he also has the superhuman capacity to feel things with extraordinary intensity and depth.

See, superhero!

In old-school romance, I think the superpower is quite often the characters’ incredible beauty, which is a kind of lame superpower, really.

My favourite one, I think, is Leo from Lisa Kleypas’s Married by Morning. He’s explaining to Catherine why he was destroyed by the death of his first love and he says: “I love like a madman.”

Leo’s superpower is the way he can love. Pretty seductive, no?

Now to the kryptonite…

I think it’s most often the person they fall in love with, which is entirely fitting. Such a great example of this is in the book I’m reading right now, Gaelen Foley‘s Lady of Desire.

Lady Jacinda Knight meets Billy Blade when she gets lost in the London rookeries, where he’s king of the local gang. She meets him in his element, at his full, wild power. He is physically and psychologically potent.

There is an incredibly touching/powerful scene when he follows her back into her London, all the way to Hyde Park, and she has no choice but to socially cut him before the society lads with her take him on. Then Blade re-takes his rightful position as an earl and braves the public humiliation of wearing purple when it is not the done thing, just to see her again.

What makes this plot work so very well is the vulnerability Jacinda creates in Blade. He follows her to a place where he loses all his power, because his longing for her works against all his instincts, to the core of who he is.

Then there’s the quite literal example of this more metaphorical idea. In the film Hancock (spoiler alert) two superheroes/gods are destined to love each other for all eternity, but whenever they come physically near each other they begin to lose their powers. That is always when they are most vulnerable.

Cryptonite takes away the alien superman and puts a human in his place. Someone flawed. Someone fearful. Someone immensely lovable.

when you blink and the world changes

sorry I haven’t been posting the last couple of days – been up in Albury visiting a friend. Albury/Wodonga is like…hmmm…Freiburg/Salzburg, but much more bogan and with less pretty architecture.

(Bogan = probably what you think of when you conjure an Aussie from a country town.)

The state line divides one town in half, which is where the similarities begin and end.

Anyway, that is so not to the point.

So I get back to Melbourne (civilisation) and our governing party has gone and overthrown our PM and put our first ever female leader in his place. It just kinda happened, overnight.

Very odd.

When I think about it, I think it’s exciting that we have a woman running our country for the first time ever. I don’t really know much about the politicking behind it all, and it’s a shame that the right-wing faction have put her there, but even if she’s voted out of parliament in six months, I think this is a really good thing.

I think that little zombie killer child from the deeps was my niece a moment ago…

my four year old niece is the most incongruous and gorgeous little person on the face of the planet, which means you love her before you even know what’s going on. Her fey little hands just reach inside your chest and pluck your heart right out to put in her nest beside the speckled eggs and bits of string she keeps there.

The same qualities that make you love her fiercely also make her the most impossible person on the face of the planet.

Since me and special k got back to Aus last year I’ve been favourite auntie of the year. Hell, of the decade.

Until a couple of months ago.

The new way of things culminated tonight in her saying “I only want to be looked after by people I love,” and proceeding to name everyone in the room but me.

And God, on paper (screen) that looks so inconsequential. It’s so transparent that she’s four. She’s irrational and there’s nothing to stop her from expressing her feelings. And kids wouldn’t know what they’re really feeling bad about if it used up all their lego to build a boat/shark/batmobile, right?

Unfortunately, I am also an irrational being, and one of those adults who can’t help taking it personally despite all logic. For the first few moments after she’s spat it out, anyway.

For those moments she’s not four, she’s just another person. In that moment I want to never, ever look after her again.

I think this is what it’s about: After her mother and father I’m the person who looks after her and her brother the most. But it doesn’t make sense to her that I – who am most definitely not her mother – also get to be strict with her and set boundaries and get her in trouble. Only Mum is the ultimate controller of her universe. So she needs to test me and test me and test me again.

And the worst part is that I know as long as I go into the situation fully in control it will all be fine. She will push, I’ll show her the boundaries and then she can relax, because one of us knows what’s going on. If she looks at me and sees her confusion mirrored there, hey, all hell might just break loose.

Mozart, I love you for this

I’m not exactly musically educated. I love to sing and I sing what’s put in front of me, but when the other members of my choir say “This is really interesting, for Mozart,” I simply have to believe them.

The song is No. 8 (from the Requiem) Domine Jesu, and it’s apparently the kind of stuff he was beginning to write when he died, making his death more tragic than it otherwise might have been. A bit like Heath Ledger, I guess, dying just as he was getting really interesting in his art.

The song is also beautiful. Amazing to sing. Here it is (like us, if we had a big hall, an orchestra and bad 80s hairdos):

rogue character hijacks novel

I was busy writing my new novel today, enjoying being inside Regina Victoria’s very well-bred mind (she never, ever listens to sarcastic Regina who sufaces every now and then) when all of a sudden Hetty Oswald turned up and took over.

Regina can’t have a best friend. It buggers up all of her motivations. Then the butler brings her this letter over breakfast:

Queen of My Heart (tell me, do I not already exceed all your suitors in poetic flattery? I have also managed to highlight the royalty of your name. A happy opening, indeed!)
But I must oblige my dear aunt this once and be serious. A quick note to tell you that you needn’t walk into the lion’s den alone (though to be quite fair my dear, I don’t think anyone would call Amess a lion, do you?). Apparently Avery has managed to secure an invitation through Miss Amess, who once held a flame for his father or some other such nonsense, and he, knowing it is to his advantage that your dearest friend (oh happy day, that is I!) enjoys his company (she only pretends to enjoy it, between you and me, because it gets her such boons as this…) he has also managed to secure an invitation for Aunt Elise and me!
Your ears do not deceive you, fair (only fair, mind, you mustn’t let those foolish men convince you of your great beauty!) Regina. I will be accompanying you to Hampshire! Grandfather has even been so good as to lend us his travelling coach, so I expect to arrive in even more style than you and the duchess.
Until we meet again on the bonny, bonny lawns of Bramwell,
yours forever,
Hetetia Roman Augusta Oswald, Lady Billingsworth

It’s seriously difficult to ignore a character that lively just because she doesn’t serve the plot. So I’m keeping her in, but she’s going to be Regina’s great rival until the moment when they come to understand each other.

Here’s hoping she doesn’t steal the show.

a piece of good news, to weigh against the bad

After being so vocal about my difficulties in dealing with rejection letters and such, I feel I should share this lovely piece of good news.

Back in March I entered the Valerie Parv Award 2010, one of the bigger Australian comps for unpublished romance manuscripts.

Just the other day I got a call from Kylie at RWAustralia. I honestly couldn’t say what it was about until she said: “Your manuscript has gone into the finals!”

For a moment or two I was just gonna go into the same normal cool response I give most things, like: “Oh, great, thanks!”

And then I thought – what the hell am I thinking! “That’s amazing news! Yay, how excitement!” and generally let myself be a total dag, which was fun.

Hey, it’s not often you get a phone call like that, ya know?

Then I posted it as my facebook status and my little bro sent me a message saying: OMG, call me NOW!

“There must be at least, like, ten thousand people who enter,” I said with great pride. “And I am in the top seven!”

“Wow, that’s amazing,” he replied, and we spent the next few minutes more or less applauding my genius.

Ok, so it turns out there were probably more like 150 entrants, but it’s still exciting, right?

I got the judges’ comments back today for the preliminary round, and one even gave me a perfect score. How proud am I? Next it gets printed and shipped off to the desk of VP herself.

Still, it makes you think. I came 4th in preliminaries against 150 or so other entrants. Good agents get at least that many manuscripts on their desk every day. And they might take on 1 or 2 new clients a year for romance. Sigh.

Does this make me a glass-half-empty-er?

Doesnae matter. Right now I’ll drink that glass up in celebration of good news received.

if there ain’t sparks, there ain’t sparks

When I was 22 I split up with my boyfriend of one-and-a-half years then spent eight months in indecision about it.

If indecision doesn’t sound so bad to you, you’ve probably never really been there. Move over purgatory.

Anyway, at about the seven month mark I met a girl and we fell in friendship-love on sight. She hadn’t bought into my dilemma, and one night when we were driving to eat pancakes she looked at me and said:

“Hey, if there ain’t sparks, there ain’t sparks.”

It was hands down the best piece of advice I got. It reminded me that love was meant to feel amazing and a little bit dangerous and like the world had caught on fire.

Today I decided to give up trying to write the novel I’ve been slogging away at for the last three months. I still love my protagonists, but I don’t get them somehow. There’s no joy, only the horrible gaping feeling every time I open a word document.

The novel follows on from my finished manuscript and would eventually form a series, so the reason I persisted so doggedly with it was that I thought: When I’m a published author I will have to be able to deliver on stories that I set up so strongly in previous novels.

I thought I should practice and build a set of skills to get past such monumental roadblocks as I’ve been facing.

Then I realised: As much as being publishable and a bankable writer is important, what the hell is the point if there’s no joy in what I’m writing? There’s no way that’ll sustain you through 100,000 words (and that’s a third draft).

If there ain’t sparks, there ain’t sparks.

When I broke up with that boyfriend I looked at him and thought – there’s nothing I don’t know about you. You are incapable of doing or saying anything that would surprise me.

My tutor Sonia Orchard talks about writing a novel to answer an unanswered question. You cannot know the answer before you begin, or the novel will lack, well, spark.

As I foolishly thought I knew that boyfriend inside out, I feel like I know exactly what this novel is. I’m just writing as though I’m recounting, not as though I’m exploring and asking and adventuring my way through the story.

So today I started on a new story that’s been building inside my head for months now, and you wouldn’t believe how curious I am to find out what happens next!

It reminds me of how it felt to meet my husband on my 23rd birthday, at the eight month mark, and think: Shit. I really didn’t just make up how it feels to fall in love.

And it makes me glad that even after four-and-a-half years I never, ever assume I know the man with the really odd sense of humour sitting across the table from me.

is romance soft porn and does it really matter?

I realised I don’t really buy into this debate much because I feel like I’m not educated enough about porn. Like is it pro- or anti-feminist these days? Is it exploitative or empowering?

But I think that not knowing what academics and politicians and other vocal, public people have to say is a really bad reason not to figure out what I think.

Firstly, I haven’t looked at much traditional porn in my life, but I’ll admit that the few times I did it kinda turned me on. And if they weren’t terrifyingly seedy I would probably go to an x-rated cinema in the middle of the day one time all by myself to satisfy my curiosity. But I guess aside from having a mildly benevolent outlook, that kind of porn doesn’t really interest me.

As far as I can tell, most of the problems people have with that kind of porn is the exploitation/objectifying of women. And maybe further down the list (much further down) comes an unease about feeding purely physical sexual desire.

When people call romance novels soft porn, their problem seems to come from the idea that women sitting and enjoying (often graphic) sex in the privacy of their own brains is somehow wrong/distasteful/degrading/unnatural, maybe even scary? No one’s being exploited here, as far as I can tell.

I’m really curious – does it matter if someone enjoys a sexual fantasy?

Personally, I love skin and boobs and bums and all the other lovely, fleshy bits of the body. I think desire is healthy, and romance novels promote a healthy, adventurous, brave relationship to desire that is rarely voiced elsewhere.

(For those of you who’ve never picked up a romance novel, the non-consensual quasi-rape thing really isn’t in fashion anymore. I don’t think it has been since the 80s.)

I love the idea that, thanks to the more than 200 years of women who stood up for all women, I have a real say in my sexuality. I also find the idea that I can be a woman to my husband’s man disarming and wonderful.

What I don’t like is that it’s hard for me to say that, for fear that I’ll sound unempowered, unemancipated. Like I’m undoing all the work of all those women.

I think romance novels these days are exploring that fine line between being sexually powerful and acknowledging what fantasies are made of.