But What I Really Want To Do Is Write

Today is November 1, which means it's once again time for NaNoWriMo. For those of you who think I'm talking more nonsense than usual, that stands for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to crank out a 50,000 word novel during the month of November.

During my general blog surfing, I'm always surprised by how many reader bloggers turn out to be aspiring authors. Naturally, several of them are going to be participating in NaNoWriMo.

I'll admit it, I'm a little touchy on this subject of reader/reviewer/aspiring author. You have to look at my history. Back when I landed in the online romance community (back when dinosaurs walked the Earth) - you had three major sources for romance novel reviews. The Romance Reader, All About Romance, and Mrs. Giggles. Certainly other sites joined in later - but those were really The Big Three. What separated TRR, AAR and Mrs. G from the print publications that reviewed romance (and really, there weren't that many of those either) were that all three would occasionally ::gasp:: not care for a book. Unfavorable reviews happened.

This was a foreign concept for a lot of authors, and naturally some of them weren't happy. Mud-slinging commenced. These sites were accused of enjoying "slash-and-burn" style reviews. All we did was nit-pick stories to death. Which was a bunch of horse-hooey. As a former TRR reviewer I can tell you I wrote way more favorable reviews (A, B, C grades or 5, 4 and 3 Hearts) than I ever did unfavorable (D and F or 2 and 1 Hearts). But the perception was that we had it "out" for romance writers. This naturally brought up that old charge that all of us were a bunch of jealous, nasty biddies who ripped apart "good" books because we were "frustrated would-be wannabe writers." Since our crap manuscripts had no doubt been soundly rejected all over New York, we decided to build up our little egos by shredding the work of more talented and published writers.

Sigh.

Sadly, this bit of nonsense still gets tossed around to this day - only this time the targets include not only "old guard" reviewers, but fairly new on the scene bloggers as well.

Now certainly I'm not saying there is anything wrong with reader bloggers being aspiring writers. What I am saying is that not all reader bloggers have that desire or aspiration. Some of us, truly, have no desire to write. Of which I am one.

I've long said that if I ever were crazy enough to try my hand at writing a book, romance would be the very last genre I would pick. Why? Because hot damn, all that emotional "stuff" is damn hard to write! And then you have to make it believable! Holy mother - no way in heck could I do that. Nope. If I were going to write, I'd pick a crime novel (because I'm blood-thirsty) or straight-up erotica (because I'm a deviant). But not a romance. I don't have it in me.

This all being said, I don't really want to write. Besides the fact it's hard, I lack a little thing called desire. When you write, you have to want it. You have to work for it. You have to sit your ass in the chair, and write. You have to write when you don't feel like it. Write when the words won't come easy. Write when you'd rather have bamboo shoots shoved underneath your fingernails. It's hard work. Hell, if it wasn't hard every John and Janie Yokel would fancy themselves being able to do it.

And actually, some of them do. Take it from the librarian who routinely receives unsolicited, self-published "manifestos." ::shudder::

So for those of you out there with aspirations to one day be published - I salute you. It's hard work. I appreciate that it's hard work. Which is why I don't do it. That, and the fact that I lack a little thing called talent. And drive. And anything remotely resembling ambition.

How many of you blog and are aspiring writers? How many of you blogged as aspiring writers and have since been published? And how many of you are like me and have no aspirations whatsoever?

Frothy Goodness

For those of you who know me in my mild-mannered librarian guise, you know that I'm the last woman on the planet to ever get excited about kitchen gadgets. I'll be blunt. I don't really thrive in the kitchen. Oh sure, I love to eat. I don't like to cook. My time spent in the kitchen can be be compared to the sexual misadventures of a teenage boy. His heart's in the right place, but most of the time he's fumbling around in the dark, not quite sure if he's "doing it" right.

Something unfortunate happened to me recently. I got myself addicted to Starbucks Earl Grey Tea Lattes. This is not good people. And frankly, no good can come to me (or my wallet) by getting addicted to anything at Starbucks.

I'm a hard core tea drinker, and I tend to drink it "straight." Sweetened. No milk. So color me surprised that I got myself addicted to a tea confection that takes steamed milk. Mmm, mmm, good!

But, back to my poor wallet. The siren song of Starbucks Earl Grey Tea Lattes was getting quite loud. So while out shopping with My Man this weekend, I came across this handy steamless milk frother. Yep. For $20 I was willing to try it and break free of the shackles of Starbucks. And boy howdy, it works! I'm now enjoying myself a nice tasty, English Breakfast Tea Latte as I type up this blog post. Mmm, mmm, good! Tasty!

In other news, our dear sweet Nathie is in southern California right now thanks to a family wedding. A bunch of us got together yesterday and hit Borders. Today, me, Nath, Tracy, Renee and (maybe) Lori are hitting a local used bookstore. I suspect I'll just end up browsing. I looked at my wishlist recently, and it was so woefully out of date, I just deleted the darn thing (I know, the horrors!). Plus, I'm still in a dreaded reading slump, and even I can't justify buying a crap-load of books when I'm not, um, really reading.

Sigh. Nobody likes a whiner Wendy.

Blowing Out The Candles

Wendy's Top 13 Birthday Wishes

1) Whatever the Hell My Man got me. The Master Gift Giver Of The Universe tells me I'll get my present this evening. At this point all I know is that it's small-ish and he's known for months what he was going to give me. Jewelery would be the obvious guess, but I don't think that's it....

2) A State Budget. This is probably too much to hope for from the politicians of California.

3) World Peace.

4) A Beatles Reunion. Is it too much to ask that George Harrison and John Lennon rise from the dead?

5) My own private library. Hell, I've got the books - just not the space.

6) Maggie Osborne to come out of retirement and start writing again.

7) Lunch with Phyl. Oh wait, did that yesterday! She's in town for a family wedding and is staying very, very close to where my office is.

8) Western romances to make a comeback and flood the market.

9)







10) To have Nora adopt me. I could be the daughter she never had, or probably even wanted. Ok, so that's not terribly realistic.....

11) To have Ewan McGregor adopt me. Yeah, much more realistic.

12) A Greek Tycoon. I'm sure the editorial department for Harlequin Presents has a couple of extras stuffed in a broom closet somewhere.

13) A job that requires me to sit at home, read all day and watch Law & Order reruns. With an employer willing to pay me, at least, my current salary. Surprisingly, this is a harder job to find than one would think.

Hangin' With The Girls

This is a busy time of year for just about everyone, but the So. Cal. Bloggers decided that one last get-together before RWA was in order. Unfortunately between family "stuff" and illness (get better soon Tracy!), only four of us ended up hanging out this afternoon for our usual gorge at Borders and The Cheesecake Factory. Myself, Rosie (who is not dead in a ditch), Lori (blog template fixin' goddess!) and Renee (Queen Urban Fantasy). Much talking, much laughing, and all around general merriment ensued. I properly sucked up to Lori for fixing my blog (thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you!) and between Borders and Rosie I came home with way too many books.

Because, you know....I don't have enough books. D'oh!

One thing I wanted to be sure to pick up at Borders was the July issue of Romantic Times. I'm still on a couple of romance-novel-related e-mail loops, and one of my long-time buds from one of those lists (waving to Fatin!) told me that I was "blurbed" in an ad for Megan Hart's latest book. Sure enough, there I am on page 119. Now during my tenure with The Romance Reader I was blurbed quite a bit. Still am on occasion. The thrill here? See.....there's my name! Usually the quote is just attributed to "The Romance Reader." But see! There's my name! I'm famous. Famous I tells ya! Ha!

Also, a much shorter version of this quote is on the actual back cover of Deeper. But yeah - just attributed to The Romance Reader. Not me. But still.....

Oh, and look....

There's Anne! Anne is famous too!

So there's my cheap thrill of the moment. Honestly, this is all it takes most days. But hey, my Mom will think it's cool and my boss will probably get a charge out of it. The rest of you? Yeah, probably not so much.

In case you're curious, Dirty was actually one of the last books I reviewed for TRR and dang, my review was pretty good. I used to write really good reviews. I'm not sure what happened. And Anne's quoted review can be found here.

While I've been boring web denizens for a couple of years now with my various musings, ramblings, readings and other nonsense at my secluded little corner of cyberspace, I like the idea of a blog. Sometimes I get this idea or notion lodged into my head that I want to type out, but don't really want to clutter up my web page. So what better format than my own online diary.

I think blogging appeals to me because I used to keep a diary during my teen years. I even kept them all. The sad state of affairs here is that I wasn't a terribly interesting young girl, and to look at my diaries now is a little embarrassing. I mean, why do I save them? Would my niece really want to learn that one of her aunt's ex-boyfriends once called her a "social death trap?" Will she be pleased to discover that for once in my life I managed a retort, albeit not very witty, by calling him a "retarded little dwarf?" To be fair, I was only 16 at the time - and while I was a bit of a social death trap, the last thing I needed was to hear him call me that.

So what can one expect from my blog? Well, I am a public librarian specializing in all things adult fiction - so expect the occasional library story. Also, I read entirely too much - mainly romance novels and some mystery - so expect a lot of that. Also, expect various musings on topics that interest me - everything from movies to music to politics - whatever strikes my fancy on a particular day.

So sit back, pull up a computer screen, and whatever you do - don't call me a social death trap.