On Romances and Writing and Not Writing Romances

I suppose you could call me a romance writer. I write love stories about couples finding their soulmates and the journey involved to get to togetherness. I didn’t really set out to write them. I just write stories about things floating around in my head, set in an ideal world.

I had nothing to base this quest on, really. I suppose because I had isolated myself into celibacy, I used my novels and stories to craft what, for me, would be the perfect romance. I suppose I should join the Romance Writers of America and Toronto Romance Writers and all of these wonderful, supportive organizations who would help me hone my craft, but that’s not really the point of this blog entry.

I was resigned to being single, without cats, because my mom’s allergic, using my craft and blank pages to make the ideal partner, in looks, in lifestyle, but especially in language. Writers can't help that last one. Those people we put on our pages either speak in vernacular we’re familiar with, or use language we hope to hear but wouldn’t dare dream of encountering. At least, that’s how it goes in my written works.

Until just before Valentine’s Day, that is.

I suppose the timing was fitting, and was just simply the best or the worst timing, depending on what version of Fate you want to lend your credence to.

I met someone. A Someone. Perhaps The Someone. But a Someone nonetheless.

He’s written a much more eloquent version of the events from his point of view on his own blog. My version would parallel his, without all of my nervousness, nailbiting, handwringing, stomach cramping, agonizing, about every move and step I took towards him. In his version, I burst into his world like a “force of nature”. In my version, I was seeking out my tribe in the middle of an online community I’d joined for a lark and discovered too much negativity for me to handle. I know, hard to believe if you’ve known me for years, but when people start telling you you’re positive, you tend to believe it after a while, and you want to shed certain deadweight from your emotional closet. The moroseness and pessimism went first. I didn’t need those things anymore; I was resigned to be celibate by choice, and I decided to be happy in resignment.

In an introductory thread in this online community, his name and his simple statement shone like a lighthouse beacon. Someone I could relate to, someone who would understand my dark underworld need to avoid superficial whining negativity; after all, it’s always been easy for me to drum up the real thing on my own. So I sent him a direct message. Which he answered. Discussion ensued, and he was definitely part of my tribe of goth industrials. My hackles lowered, my shoulders relaxed, and we just kept talking. He was very cool and affable. I was sussing him out to see when I could ask about the goings on in the community, when we started talking about things we like and don’t like, as you do with anyone, friend, acquaintance, 20 second speed date...

Three days in, I swooned. I cooed. Recognizing I don’t swoon and coo. I don't even write characters who swoon and coo. This could kill all of my cool points with this dude. At least he didn’t hear me when I cooed in the depths of night when I read his message, of his favourite movies listed by release year, ordered just chronologically so -- something I would totally do, and, without knowing or thinking about what he’d done, he’d shown me inside of himself. Because he was just being himself and that list was the sweetest thing I’d been sent in a while from anyone, stranger, acquaintance, or friend.

I could go on about how nervous I was after that point. About how some of those ideals that I had written about for years were coming to life before my eyes, through the voice of a relative stranger. His candor, his honesty, his inability to try, and when I say that, I mean he wasn’t being flirty or trying to get with me at all. He was just being himself. And I was just being me, while hiding all of my nervousness and stomach flips behind a keyboard.

So far, we were following the plots of most of my written stories. People being themselves, coming together through circumstances, and then realizing, always too quickly, that their lives were meant to be intertwined.

Friends tell me, either with a laugh or with a look of terror, that I have this wonderful (horrifying) habit of going after what I want with direct force and determination, with little regard for things that get in my way. When my secret cooing and swooning became overt declarations, somehow I fell in love with the coolest man on the planet, and (I still don’t know how but) the best part is that he loves me back. And here is the strangest thing: his language, his vernacular, when speaking with me and only me, in those quiet hours between late night and early morning, or those loud hours between late morning and early afternoon, is taken almost word for word from those romances I wrote, words that he has yet to read (because they're in draft form and nobody but nobody reads those drafts). It’s an exhilarating coincidence, but it makes me wonder if I had always known I would find him or if I found him because of his vernacular?

I couldn’t have written this story better myself.

Only this is the problem now. Which story am I meant to write? How do I get back to writing fiction when I’m crafting the ideal story in real life? How am I supposed to write it down when my beau is writing this out better than I ever could? He’s idealizing me, and I like that point of view for the protagonist better than the one I would have selected.

I have a manuscript that needs editing and rewriting. Instead I’m writing blogs and short poems and prose and anything else just to capture these initial moments. I know what it’s like to lose sight of them after months or years of togetherness, or when those moments leave you once and for all. For some reason, this time, I don't want to go down that path of forgetfulness, when the moments fade and settle into routine. I’ve seen couples, long term and lifetime of love couples, who still have that spark when they talk to each other about anything from art and literature to picking up de-icing salt for the walkway. I might even have a chance at that now, and I need to grasp every moment so I remember every single second of what this feels like.

But I’m not getting much writing done. I’m so busy living this real story that I’ve all but forgotten how to dive down into fiction.  I’m sure I’ll remember eventually, but my fear is that I won’t want to go back to fiction if I’m living a better story.

I’ve heard other writers complain about this. They managed to get back to the page. I’m sure I will as well.

In the meantime, I’ll just hold onto these moments. Savour them. Cherish them. And make them last forever…

Fear of a Black Hat

I lost my favourite hat today.

I had it yesterday. I remember taking it off during the drive home because my head was feeling weird.

I had to go shopping for paint this morning and I wanted to put on my hat and go to the store. Now I’m old, and misplacing objects has pretty well become common place these days. Can’t find something one day, it’ll turn up the next day. I put important things like my keys in the exact same spot as soon as I get home so I don’t lose them, but hats, coats, gloves…whatever. No big deal. I’ve got plenty of other hats.

But today I went apeshit looking for my hat before I left. I checked the car. I checked the closet, the stairs, my room, my bed (it would NEVER be there – I saw Drugstore Cowboy!), every single inch of my house and I couldn’t find my hat. Today, the hat became the biggest deal of all.

So why today? Why did I go nuts looking for a hat that will probably turn up as soon as I’m finished writing this?

Because I need luck. And the hat, my favourite hat, is a crutch. My security hat, as it were. I had it all figured out. My day, like most of my days, is planned to the moment. If I put on my hat, went and did my errands, the whole day would go swimmingly and everything would be perfect.

Only I don’t have the hat. So, as anyone who is superstitious or overly anxious will tell you, the day will now go to shit.

But whose fault would it be if the day went to shit? Would it be the hat’s fault? An inanimate object that was crafted in a factory in China somewhere among hundreds of other similar black hats has that much power over my life. And I have no such power to guide the day out of the shit. Apparently.

How ridiculous does that sound?

The day is going to be exactly what it is and no more, no less.

How shitty has this day been? I left without the hat, got everything I need to finish painting my kitchen, came back, took everyone out for lunch, finished my paint prep, made dinner, posted on Instagram, and drank my requisite 64 oz of water.  The opera on Saturday Afternoon at the Opera was La Boheme, one of my favourites and exactly what I needed to hear today at this moment in my life and everyone in the house left me alone because they know when it’s La Boheme they don’t interrupt. Not one freaking sound.

That doesn’t sound like such a bad day, does it? And whatever is going to happen during the rest of the day and night is going to happen and will turn out exactly as it’s meant to turn out. Whether I find the hat or not.

The universe is sending me a message, and maybe I need to listen to these more often.

I hate wearing hats anyway. 

Writing Enough

I’m not writing enough.

I hear myself say that every day. I’m sitting here in the chaos that is my workspace—I like it that way—surrounded by six printed copies of my draft novel with Beta comments (I am in the process of sorting through them so I can rewrite the next draft and improve upon the foundations I laid in the first , or at least, that's the intention), craft books, unread novels, half-read novels, pens, paper, lip balm, hand cream, water cups, candles, flags, a lamp, and a sewing machine. The sewing machine serves no purpose except to remind me of two things: (i) no one single person has to be able to do everything on the planet; and (ii) it's okay to not be able to do something for myself. You may think that's easy to remember. For someone like me, it's not. But that's for another day, you see, because I'm not writing while I talk about the sewing machine sitting on my desk, collecting dusk, with a black tin car made out of a kazoo sitting on the spindle area. 

I should be working on editing that novel, or putting down the new story that is floating through my brain made up by a sibling of the creature who created the draft(s) sitting next to me. In fact, I wish I could stay home and work on that all day.

But it's tough to be a paid writer these days. Everyone can write a book, and every other person has self-published at least one. Even journalists have a tough time out there. If you aren't a big name, you're a freelancer, and you're expected to sell your rights along with your story. And unless you do give up those rights, you're not covered if something you write happens to insult someone else. I spend my days writing emails about situations just like that. Very long emails. Sometimes they're at least three or four paragraphs. Other times I'm writing to websites scraping content that is put forth by these underpaid writers. These are much longer letters, letting these sites know that they can't get away with infringement. Those are sometimes two or three page letters. I work on contracts, communications, special projects, all of which involve some type of written communication -- memos, emails, letters -- all written by me. I would say I write an average of 10,000 words per day at work. 

Throughout the day, in the early morning, and often in the evening, before I sit down at my workspace, I check in with my organizations (writing organizations, schools, and the like) and write emails. Couple of sentences here, a few more there. Not much, nothing more than a paragraph.

Then there are the messages - instant messaging, text messaging. I don't write one or two word answers. I remember the days when we had to pay per text, so I like to get my money's worth out of that ten cents per text. But now, messaging is practically unlimited. And I'm a writer. I talked about this with other writers the other day, and we know we have a problem with instant messaging. Where many of our friends are good with one word, nay, one letter (don't get me started about that), we're off writing a blog per message. So those are a few words I get in. I would say at least 50 per message, sometimes 100, sometimes, uh, more...oops. 

After all of that, I find myself here, at my workspace, realizing that I haven't written at all today. My goal is to write at least a paragraph a day, whether that be in my edits or on a new piece. Sometimes I do more than a paragraph, and sometimes less. Yesterday I was so consternated at things going on in life I wrote a poem in a fitted peak. But that's not a paragraph. 

But today I haven't written a paragraph at all. Instead, I wrote this blog entry. 

People always ask me, "How's your writing going?" I always say I'm not writing enough. Because, as you can see, I'm not.

When I start writing enough, that's when I'll stop and take a Netflix break.

Resolutions

I resolve to be in a better place on December 31st than I was on January 1st of this year.

I resolve to be happy with who I am, even in those darkest times where everything that shouldn't happen does, and I've painted myself into my own corner of despair. 

I resolve to treat myself with respect. I resolve to own every choice I make, good, bad, otherwise. 

I resolve to declare my opinions out loud, no matter how controversial they may be. 

I resolve to finish things that I have started, and complete things that I have previously left unfinished. 

I resolve to enjoy life and all it has to offer for as long as I can.

I resolve to remain patient while people who feel they must do so tell me what I know. I resolve to remember to keep my hindsight to myself. 

I resolve to find all the things I seek, even if these things are not in the most traditional of locations.

I resolve to see myself the way others see me.

I resolve to remember that every day is a gift and an opportunity to learn, and that there will never be another day like today.