Waiting for the End to Arrive

I am writing a romance novel. Well, mostly I'm writing this blog. But I got to this point because I'm writing a romance novel, as I clearly state over there in the right column. Everyone knows I am writing the book, and often check on my progress, either indirectly ("Hey, send me some new chapters!") or otherwise ("Wow; how long have you been at it now?").  The kids keep asking me if I'm done, which is starting to freak me out a little, because I desperately want to say, "Yes, Mommy has completed her opus. Come take a look!"  Even the Captain will occasionally ask me where I am in the story. I tell him, and then I map out where I'll be going with it, and it makes him sad. Because he has lived a version of this tale, and he feels for my hero. I remind him that the most basic requirement of romance fiction is a happy ending.

The truth is, I'm a little...stuck. I keep looking at the word count to make myself feel better (78,565), but honestly, I know what I have to do, and I'm just procrastinating. The next chapter is what I consider "transitional." It serves to move the story along, but with no major events (a.k.a. sex, or fighting) contained within it,  it's more difficult to get jazzed up to tackle the writing. 

I also decided, somewhere along the way, that it might be a good idea to learn  more about how to actually construct a romance novel. This may have been a mistake. Now I worry about "showing" instead of "telling," and the dangers of "head-hopping" (not as exciting as you think). And I have discovered that I prefer to edit as I go, as opposed to just getting the story done. How does one do that, without laboring over words?

I chose the poems for the blog at the beginning of this week. I wanted there to be a thematic arc, through the phases of life and love. Reading them was a reminder of my own journey, alone and together with the Captain, who many years ago was my boyfriend. And remembering that time has made me curious about my characters again.

I am going to try and recall the feelings I had at the beginning of the novel. I will conjure the summer heat, and warm skin longing to be touched by another's hand. I will remember the thrill of the first kiss, and the joy in stolen glances. I will close my eyes and be transported back in time to the wretched airlessness of heartbreak. Then I will wake, and, hopefully, write my happy ending.

Now, about when you find the happy ending...

The Hush of the Very Good

by Todd Boss

 

You can tell by how he lists

                                          to let her

kiss him, that the getting, as he gets it,

is good.

             It’s good in the sweetly salty,

deeply thirsty way that a sea-fogged

rain is good after a summer-long bout

of inland drought.

                            And you know it

when you see it, don’t you? How it

drenches what’s dry, how the having

of it quenches.

                        There is a grassy inlet

where your ocean meets your land, a slip

that needs a certain kind of vessel,

                                                      and

when that shapely skiff skims in at last,

trimmed bright, mast lightly flagging

left and right,

                      then the long, lush reeds

of your longing part, and soft against

the hull of that bent wood almost im-

perceptibly brushes a luscious hush

the heart heeds helplessly—

                                          the hush

of the very good.