Wednesday Reading

I listened to a cute romantic comedy audiobook titled, NORA GOES OFF SCRIPT by Annabelle Monaghan. The heroine was a romance channel (think Lifetime or Hallmark) screenwriter and did well enough to take care of her family but not really hit big. Her jerk of a husband leaves her, and she writes her breakout script. Then she falls in love with the famous lead actor in the movie when it’s filmed on her property. Okay that’s all fairly standard stuff and I liked it. What made me laugh was her take on writing romances — there’s a formula and she can make any scenario into a romance with some tweaking. Her new boyfriend gives her a heroine and a career and she turns into a plot in less than a minute. A lot of us who write romances play this game. Wizard and I play it. So this was familiar and amusing to me.

I enjoyed her humorous and straightforward take on it. She was in no way degrading romance because there is a formula. The talent comes in with voice and execution and she had that. What was funny was she accidentally lost her way after her divorce and wrote a darker book without the happy ending. Then she tried to go back to her bread and butter romances, and couldn’t do it. I related to that! I often struggled with staying within the formula of whatever genre I was writing, while my heart was always trying to make the book bigger (for lack of a better word). Nowhere did I feel it more than when I wrote the Once A Marine Series. By the third book, I was busting the seams of that formula, unintentionally creating problems from the publisher. And that was on me, no one else (I am NOT blaming the publisher, they had clear guidelines). I came to admire even more the amazing writers who work exceedingly hard to write book after beautiful book following the formula. Many of them can do it very fast too. Of course, there are those petty jealous types who will call them hacks and other names. They are NOT hacks. What they are is so talented that they can make the same formula for each book interesting and engaging each and every time. That takes real talent and hard work.

Anyhow, this book reminded me of all this in a fun and positive way, making me laugh and nod along. It made me want to sit down and write again, which is a nice feeling. Not something I’m acting on at the moment, but so nice to feel that desire! And to laugh with a character struggling to write within the formula the same way I have struggled.

Right now I’m listening to a Women’s Fiction titled I’LL BE YOU by Janelle Brown that’s holding my interesting but it’s too soon to form an opinion.

What are you reading or listening to?

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