I like happy endings, too, believe it or not. But I rarely finish anything.

DH says he's a cynic, and that a cynic is a disappointed idealist. I suppose that's what I am. I think that's why I've liked Joss' and Tim's work so much. They give us an earned happiness, sometimes even an unearned joyful time. But almost immediately, with no warning, comes a gut punch, a reminder that life is full of both light and dark, and that you can't have happy sunshine and balloons and fairies and not have the death and dismemberment, the pain and the fear and the sorrow.

I didn't decide to write that way, but my longest pieces have that dark turn in them. I want happy endings. I think I'm just afraid to trust them, that there's always another darkness lurking behind the bunnies and flowers.

Deena, as Amy says, the simplicity of the language is what makes your piece so devastating, what gives it the ring of truth. (((Deena)))

I like drabbling things I wouldn't or couldn't do. I don't think I have the chutzpah to sustain it over more than a hundred or so words, but the places I absolutely will not tread in life are ... well, why be off limits in fiction? What is the mind for, then?

It's of the frame of mind that people with rape fantasies want to rape/be raped -- which I thought was pretty poorly regarded. But I've heard "how can you think those things?" as if the crime lay in the mind.

As a writer, I constantly have to guard against a tendency to be too nice to my characters.

Go nonfiction. Real people are so much easier to be mean to. They give you so much cause.

Go nonfiction. Real people are so much easier to be mean to. They give you so much cause.

Eh, I'm a fiction writer. It's the only way to have a head full of imaginary personalities and still be sane.

Go nonfiction. Real people are so much easier to be mean to.

Yes, but unlike fictional characters, real people can hunt you down and sic dogs or lawyers on you.

Yes, but unlike fictional characters, real people can hunt you down and sic dogs or lawyers on you.

They can go right ahead. Act a fool, get a chapter. That's my new motto.

They can go right ahead. Act a fool, get a chapter. That's my new motto.

t predicts massive influx of lurker email in Allyson's box

DH says he's a cynic, and that a cynic is a disappointed idealist.

I deemed myself a "cynical idealist" years ago. Metaphorically, my rose-colored glasses are broken.

Never say I don't climb right back on the horse that threw me:

I spent a stray half hour today while Annabel was napping looking up info on every RWA contest I could find throughout the year, trying to get a feel for which might be the best fits for my work. I really wasn't planning to enter anything else until sometime in 2005, when I came across the New England Chapter's First Kiss contest, with a deadline of Nov. 1. "Hmm," read the thought bubble above my head. "AmyLiz specifically praised the first kiss in the castle tower in Lucy's book. And you yourself think the near-kiss in Anna's is the most romantic and sexy thing you've ever written. All you've got to do is make it into an actual kiss instead of just 'lips so close their breath mingled', and it's eligible. And the final round judge is from Warner. You'd love to be published there."

So I promptly fired off an email to the contest coordinator to make sure I wasn't limited to just the one entry.

And then I looked at my score sheets from yesterday a little more closely, and it's not quite as horrible as I thought. The scores are disappointing, but the comments were broadly positive--one judge praised my style and liked my heroine, the other just said I needed to do some polishing and tighten up my synopsis a whole lot, but to keep at it. And with one or two exceptions, the criticism was all for areas I already suspected needed work. I'm just trying to reconcile the decent feedback with the less-than-decent scores! But I'm feeling cool enough about it to sit down and write thank-you notes tonight.