Comfort Food

                                                                                                 In my first novel, my main character Bea is "between men" as she puts it, happily single, and finds solace in cooking--maybe too much. Her cousin and a friend imply that perhaps food has become a substitute for other sorts of fulfillment:

"Bea's hopeless." Marie gestured to me in the manner of a lazy hitchhiker. "She takes cookbooks to bed, you know." "I do not!" My volume rose in direct proportion to the lie. I did take cookbooks to bed. They didn't hog the covers, snore, or leave their underwear on the floor. And in the end, they afforded me lots more pleasure.

Though my heroine and I have little in common (she's younger and has better legs) we do share this one little habit. I just love curling up with a good cookbook. I browse library sales in search of them, and the older the volume the better. My pride and joy is my sixty year old Betty Crocker, followed closely by my 1964 Joy of Cooking. I also have a 1959 Pillsbury Best of the Bake-Off collection whose flyleaf features lots of ladies in black cat's-eye glasses standing in front of appliances the color of Easter eggs. My modern favorites include the seminal Silver Palate Cookbook and Queen Julia's The French Chef. I also have more Italian cookbooks than anyone would ever need, including two in Italian. The language, that is.  And the voices in these cookbooks, like those of my favorite authors, are familiar and comforting. Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins make me feel as though I can throw the coolest party ever. Marion Rombauer's scholarly references and scientific formality help me believe in the power of culinary chemistry, and the possibility of perfection. And where would any of us be without Julia, full of warm encouragement and quick laughter, who let us drop the chicken and add the butter? But the real secret to my pleasure in cookbooks is no secret at all: in the pages of cookbooks, everything turns out right in the end. The cake rises. The flavors meld. The meat is tender and the risotto creamy. The reality, of course, is quite different. (Witness my epic Christmas Eve 2010 Lasagna Fail.) But cookbooks, just like my favorite comfort reads, always give me the happy ending I crave--even if life doesn't.

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A Book By Any Other Name

When I tell people I have written a book, the first question nearly everyone asks is: "What's it called?" And I hesitate to tell them every time. Because the title I have now--the so-called "working title"--is very likely not the one the book will end up with.

This is something that takes a while to learn. When I wrote my first novel, I came up with a title I loved. (More about that later.) It was short, succinct, and had a cute double entendre going for it. The trouble is, it wasn't a real indicator of what the book was about, so my agent and I brainstormed lots of titles that suggested both Shakespeare and the book's Jersey setting.

This activity soon became a kind of parlor game for my family and friends, who came up with suggestions like:

 Much A Dude About Nothing 

The Merry Ex-Wives of West Windsor

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, NJ

and my personal favorite, courtesy of my son Adam: Julius, Seize Her! or alternatively, Julius Sees Her. (Isn't this fun?)

Anyway, my current project is going out as Taming Kate, which gives a pretty clear idea of what my book is about and what it's referencing. But its very familiarity could end up working against it, and down the line it could certainly change. And there's always that frustration of coming up with what seems like the perfect title, only to find that it's already out there. The lovely, rhythmic, and oh-so-apt Much Ado About You,  for example, was off limits to me, because it already belongs to the incomparable Eloisa James. And a title I considered for my current book, Plain Kate, is a young adult book that was released in September.

And that first title I came up with? The one I loved? It's The Marriage Plot, which just happens to be the name of Jeffrey Eugenides' upcoming novel, due out in October.  Eugenides is the author of  The Virgin Suicides and Middlesex, works that are about as far from fun beach reads as you can get.

So I had to have a little going away party for my title.  (I always knew it had potential.) I wished it luck, gave it my blessing, and now look forward to seeing it on the New York Times bestseller list.

Just not with my name next to it.

Adapting Shakespeare, Part II

In many ways, Shakespeare’s plays ask essential questions about what it means to be human. In the comedies, many of those questions have to do with love, and while the plays are funny, their themes are decidedly serious. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example, asks if love is really just an illusion. Twelfth Night raises questions about the meaning of gender, the limits of faithfulness, and the places our journeys take us. In the comedies, it is often his female characters who struggle with such issues; they are fully realized women, and I have come to think of a couple of them as friends. Much Ado about Nothing, on which I based my first novel, features my favorite Shakespearean heroine. To me, the question in that play is rooted in Beatrice’s experience:

what happens when a seriously smart woman, chafing under the conventions of her time and station in life, meets her intellectual match in a man she claims to hate? Kate, of The Taming of the Shrew, lacks Beatrice’s “merry heart,” but shares her intellectual gifts. Unlike Beatrice, who uses humor to mitigate her situation, Kate has a white hot core of anger—but it’s an anger borne of loneliness. While it’s easy to write Kate off as a shrew, Shakespeare doesn’t give us a one-dimensional character, but a frustrated woman who resents living in the shadow of her younger, prettier, and much more compliant and conventional sister. So I asked myself: what would happen to a Kate or Beatrice or Viola in a modern setting with modern problems? Strangely enough, it’s pretty much what happened to the heroines of several centuries years ago. They struggle with finding their identities as women. They have anger with few outlets for it. Sometimes they fall in love with men who don’t deserve them. Sometimes they fall in love with men who do. And just as in real life, all of them are different people in Act Five than they were in Act One. I teach my students a simple formula about Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies: in the tragedies, people die. In the comedies, people get married. And while I don’t marry my heroines off, I do give them what they deserve—a happy ending.

Just What She Ought

“Rosemary, your books need more sex.” So says my 76 year-old mother. Not a comment I expected, certainly, but one I’d like to address. In the industry, my genre label is “women’s fiction,” but I think of what I do as romantic comedy. Though my protagonists grow and change through the narratives, a love story serves as the, well, heart of my books. And I love writing love scenes, those anxiously awaited pages in a story that get re-read, flipped back to, or highlighted on a Kindle. For these reasons, they have to be good. More than that, they have to be convincing. The reader has to be swept along on the emotions of the couple—she has to get as weak-kneed and fluttery as the heroine, otherwise the writer has not done her job. It’s not easy to get those scenes right. And it’s even harder if you move those two people into the bedroom and then leave the door open. Which I am loath to do. I’m a big believer in the love scene fading to black, in quietly closing the door upon the couple to let them get on with it, without me reporting their every move. It’s not that I don’t appreciate a well-written sex scene myself now and then. I’m just not that comfortable writing them, and I know there is a certain readership (one that does not include my mother, obviously) that's just as uncomfortable reading them, and might prefer to use their imaginations a little—or a lot, as the case may be. My model in this is of course, Jane Austen, who, to modern readers’ great frustration, never detailed a kiss between her heroes and heroines, and in fact limited their declaration scenes to narrative rather than dialogue. This practice is maddeningly summed up in three short sentences from Emma, in the scene in which Mr. Knightly finally confesses his love. Instead of a direct answer from Emma, we get this from the narrator: “What did she say?—Just what she ought, of course. A lady always does.” So Mom, and anybody else out there who’s interested, use your imagination. If you want to know what my heroine is doing behind closed doors, well, it’s just what she ought, of course—and anything else you might want to dream up for her.

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Resolution 1/1/11

Be it resolved, on this First Day of Two Thousand and Eleven, between the Author Presumptive and Herself: I. The Author Presumptive (hereafter known as A.P.) shall allow herself no more than two (2) minutes per day of dark ruminations upon The State of Her Career, The Suspicion That She Has No Talent,  and Those Who Have Already Garnered Book Deals. II. The A.P. shall observe strict parameters for the commencement and conclusion of Cocktail Time, which shall begin no earlier than 5:00 4:30 p.m. EST on alternate days ending in “Y,"  unless in the case of Emergencies or Other Unforeseen Circumstances (as defined by The A.P.). III. The A.P. shall adhere to the advice of her Esteemed Agent with a Minimum of Whining. IV. The A.P. shall demonstrate more appreciation for Her Darling Husband (hereafter known as H.D.H). V. The A.P. shall cook at least three (3) Nutritious Meals per week for H.D.H. and Her Beloved Offspring (hereafter known as H.B.O) at least one of which shall feature A Fish Protein that has not occupied a can. VI. The A.P. shall cease all imaginings of Dire Events each time H.B.O. operate a motor vehicle, occupy the passenger seat of a motor vehicle, or in fact, step out the door of The Maternal Domicile. VII. For each minute spent Trolling the Kindle Book Store, the A.P. shall spend an equal and opposite number of minutes on Her Elliptical Trainer. VIII. The A.P. shall limit her consumption of the offerings of the Bravo Network to only one (1) program per season, unless and until Top Chef resumes, thereby rendering this resolution  Null and Void. IX. The A.P. shall immediately desist from fantasies involving Three Book Deals, Lifetime Movie Adaptations, and Lunches with Nora Ephron and/or Tim Gunn. X. The A.P. will daily remind herself that she is in possession of A Loving Family, Loyal Friends, Moderately Good Health, and that she is, in fact and indeed—One of the Lucky Ones. Happy New Year, everyone!

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Adapting Shakespeare, Part I

There are some stories we just never tire of hearing. Their characters seem like old friends, and we know exactly how they will end. As an avid reader of literary updates, sequels, prequels and pastiches, it seemed a natural choice for me to write one of my own. And for better or for worse, I chose to adapt the material of the biggest guy in the literary room: William Shakespeare, widely considered an inveterate stealer of plots himself. Shakespeare’s comedies and their many conventions—mistaken identity, false love versus true, controlling parents, the find love/lose love/get love back narrative—actually have their roots in early Roman plays. When it comes to romantic comedy, there really hasn’t been anything new in a couple of thousand years. Though Shakespeare is accused of stealing plots, he was actually adapting much older stories for his contemporary audience, using recognizable and well-loved conventions that he knew his audience fully expected; it’s a practice writers and filmmakers still employ today. In fact, you could say there’s a pretty straight line from Much Ado about Nothing to When Harry Met Sally. When I set out to adapt my four favorite  Shakespeare comedies, Much Ado about Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I strove to create fresh material while staying faithful to the definitive elements of the plays. While I’ve given them Jersey shore settings (in a happy coincidence, two of the four are originally set in coastal towns) added characters, and updated language, I’ve tried hard to preserve the heart of each story. In the books I use real life situations—a family wedding, the opening of a bed-and-breakfast, the renovation of a restaurant—with realistic characters, the essence of which are Shakespeare's originals. Beatrice and Benedick’s banter, Kate’s anger, and Viola’s faithfulness are as recognizable and relevant today as they were 400 years ago. I hope their 21st century counterparts express these things faithfully--even without the iambic pentameter.

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"When She is Beginning to Write"*

I spent a lot of years "beginning to write." I  purchased endless reams of paper--from plain white to yellow legal pads to pretty floral stationery. ** I  bought journals from the dollar store and ordered leather portfolios from catalogs. I've got  manila folders, accordion files, colored index cards and several sizes of sticky notes. My desk drawers are filled with gel pens, ball point pens, erasable pens, disposable fountain pens, highlighters, mechanical and wooden pencils, and erasers of every size and hue. I have a desktop, a laptop, and a wide assortment of USB sticks. (And then there's that giant erasable white board with a set of multi-colored markers that seemed like such a good idea at the time.)

But each time I sat down to begin to write, that's all it was--a beginning. A few short stories, some scribbled poems, plans for a novel that never fully materialized. And when I couldn't sustain the attempt, I just bought more writing paraphernalia. As if a packet of colored index cards could somehow replace diligence, or a new green fountain pen were a substitute for inspiration. I know better now. Because when I finally committed to being a writer, it came down to just me and a keyboard. And time. And sweat. And lots of disappointment, and doubts that crept in like a dark fog. Followed by more time and sweat. And finally, the exhilaration of  three hundred pages emerging from my printer faster than I could stack them up. I still prowl the aisles at Staples. (I never met a gel pen I didn't like.) But all the sticky notes and colored index cards in the store won't make me a writer. Only I can do that.

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*William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing **Many thanks to the awesome design team at Waxcreative for the virtual equivalent of pretty paper!