So that's where I've been going wrong

[louiselux]

Spotted in this entertaining article about a Mills & Boon writing course: advice on how to write a romance novel:

'Take a single red rose, place in a vase on your desk. Smell it. Light aromatic candles. Anoint your body with your favourite oil. Put on a silk negligee and rub your hands up and down your body. Pour a glass of chilled white wine. Close your eyes and imagine Tom Selleck is making love to you. Start writing.'

Fan version: Take over the computer, so no one else can use it for hours. Smell yourself. Wish you had aromatic candles. Anoint your body with some lukewarm coffee. Put on a pair of baggy old tracksuit bottoms and rub your hands up and down your keyboard. Pore over livejournal until it's clear no one's updating. Close your eyes and imagine Severus Snape is making love to Tom Selleck only joking whoever you damn well please. Start writing.'

Comments

[lamardeuse.livejournal.com]

I'm going to print this, frame it and hang it over my computer. :)

Close your eyes and imagine Severus Snape is making love to Tom Selleck only joking whoever you damn well please.

LOLOL! I don't think Snape would think much of the mustache...

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I don't think Snape would think much of the mustache...

Defintely not a facial hair man! Or a Hawaiian shirt amn, come to that..

[graculus.livejournal.com]

Tom Selleck? Ewwwww!

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

But we ladies are all supposed to dream of his hot bod and lust after his luxuriant facial hair!

Aren't we?

[graculus.livejournal.com]

*shudders*

[chatte-noire.livejournal.com]

The poor fiction writer's romance bible right there. Whoever you damn well please!

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! Too right.

[scribbulus-ink.livejournal.com]

Fan version:

LOL! So very, very true, especially the bit about poring over LJ.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Heh. Sad but so very true!

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

By the time I got to Anoint your body with some lukewarm coffee, I was laughing so much I drooled. It was very attractive and made me irresistable to Tom Selleck.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

See! It works! Any lukewarm beverage, in fact, doesn't even have to be coffee.

Mmmm, large caterpillar moustaches. Not.

[yay4pikas.livejournal.com]

I don't like white wine. Mead somehow conjures up images of carousing Anglo-Saxon warriors who don't bathe, and rum conjures up images of pirates who also don't bathe. Also, red roses are very rarely scented, and ew, Tom Selleck?

All I need to do to get in a writing mood is to stay up until 3 am the day before I have a massive paper due! That always makes me want to write fiction (of course, I have to write the paper instead).

Or airplanes, but I'm paranoid about people reading over my shoulder, so I have to type in 8pt Verdana, which I can't read.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

All I need to do to get in a writing mood is to stay up until 3 am the day before I have a massive paper due!

Ahahaha! Exactly, yes, that works for me too. Papers to write, housework to do, job to go to...

[enigel]

Pore over livejournal until it's clear no one's updating.

this hurts, my friend (as truth often does).

the only time when I wrote consistently and without interruptions was in my first days at work, when the internet connection was broken. (my job required Internet access.)

my writing advice:
prepare stack of chocolate. go to your cable/DSL/whatever modem. look at it tenderly, reach a hand as if stroking.
rip the connector, feel that desperate, hollow ache of loneliness for a horrible half of hour.
start writing.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Ach, so cruel! You are so brave, I could never do that.

My main technique involves being forced to sit on train for 3 hours a day with nothing to do.

[enigel]

advice is easy to give, but harder to follow - I never said I was doing that; I couldn't, but my ISP is trying to take care of this problem for me by random malfunctions in the network.

ah, the joys of commuting... I'll have to ask my friend _nightelf if this is how she started writing haiku :D