Lazy Day, almost

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When I look outside, the brilliant sunshine and cloudless day make me think that it should be balmy, even tropical, outside. It was, in fact, 14 degrees when I got up this morning. My flannel jammies STILL feel like just the thing to wear all day, although I have changed the top…well, there are just certain things a girl must put on before answering the door for the cute (REALLY cute) FedEx guy.

He was bringing my RITA entries. Yes, it’s one of those “I said yes” things. I’m one of the first round judges for both the Golden Heart and RITA contests this year. I’ve now received all entries, and am thrilled to see that I know not a single author among them. Thrilled because now I don’t have to write RWA and decline any of them. I won’t judge my friends in a contest of this note.

But I am in the right mood for judging. Yesterday I finished Cassandra King’s QUEEN OF BROKEN HEARTS on CD, and it’s set my mind to that mode. I truly enjoyed this book, and there were parts of it that charmed me as much as THE SUNDAY WIFE did. I adored THE SUNDAY WIFE. I tried SAME SWEET GIRLS, but I couldn’t get into it as much, probably because of my own preferences instead of the quality of the writing, which was generally good.

Unfortunately, I found myself doing something that was distinctly unfair to King. I wound up comparing one element of her work to Dorothy Dunnett – a process unfair to most any other writer on the planet, dead or alive. For me, Dunnett is the queen, especially when it comes to NOT FLINCHING.

Y’see, most writers, myself included, write our hearts out. We pour ourselves into our work, telling the best story we can. But when it comes to the hard stuff, that moment when the logical outcome lies before you, harsh and unyielding, the moment when you KNOW how real life would resolve it, we flinch. Instead of “real,” we opt for “fiction.” The happy ending. The villain is punished, and all’s well that end’s well. Sometimes it works; sometimes it betrays and weakens the story.

Dunnett never does, she NEVER flinched, and even wrote about that. There came a moment, I think in CHECKMATE, if my memory is sound today, where she didn’t want to do what had to be done. She wanted to flinch. Her husband encouraged her to stay true to the story, to write the “real.” She did, and it’s the most powerful, memorable, “throw the book against the wall” moment in the whole Lymond series.

Every time I sit down to write, I keep that in mind. No, given the genre in which I write, I cannot always do that. But I can as much as possible, with the ulitmate goal of writing that book of my heart, the one that’s honest and real and may never find a market. But, then again, it just might.

In the meantime, I keep writing . . . and reading.

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