When Writing Plans Go Awry--oops, wrong era!

I've discovered, much to my astonishment, that I've got a chick lit novel lurking in my brain. No magic, no vampires or fairies, no tragically epic or epically tragic romance, just a woman with failed ambitions who changes directions in life and learns some Very Important Lessons about life and love, and hopefully draws a few laughs in the process. It made itself known to me over the weekend, tempting me with its siren song to join it and forsake all others.

Of course, I'm at the point in my current novel where this always happens, about the same point I was at in my first attempt to write it when I thought, "Hey, maybe I should write a romance novel!" and set it aside to do just that, before setting that aside to focus on the romance that had become my life. I always get almost to the halfway point and then get A Better Idea, or at least a New And Therefore More Attractive To My Short Attenion Span Idea, and decide it's so good that I'd better get started on it before I forget and it's gone forever, and this is exactly why I never finish a manuscript.

The New Idea is made even more tempting by the Crapometer reader comments I received telling me that my little faerie tale is so derivative and unoriginal that it's not even worth telling. This despite the fact that those comments were only a few amidst a dozen or so more encouraging notes (and as you can probably tell by this post's title, I'm more annoyed by the personal nitpick comments than by the unoriginal accusations. But still, ow). They say it takes at least seven positive comments to undo the effects of a negative one; I think it takes a lot more than that to assuage the writer ego. Even so, I think my little faerie tale is worth telling, if for nothing else than the simple fact that it wants to be told, and both getting it out of my system and completing a damn novel will do me worlds of good, even if nobody but my friends ever reads it.

One unexpectedly useful thing I think this whole hook-writing business has taught me, though, is that writing hooks is a good way of shaping a story. If you put the hook first it becomes a mini-outline and helps to narrow the focus of what, precisely, the book is about. So I wrote a hook for the New Idea and filed it away to revisit after I'm done drafting my faerie tale. Simply telling that much of the story satisfied it enough that it's content now to wait its turn. And I think writing a hook for an idea is also a good way to tell if you really have a story there. So useful. So helpful. So much more thanks due the mighty Miss Snark. If I kiss her rear-end, it's because she's earned it.

Anyway, back to the chick lit that's suddenly infecting my brain. What's that all about? It's not really a genre I go out of my way to read. Or watch. I mean, I only watched both Bridget Jones' Diaries on cable, and only for the Firth factor. I never read the books or any of the dozens of knock-offs. Okay, there's Mary Janice Davison's Undead And... series, but at least that has vampires, so it still fits comfortably in my urban fantasy/horror cozy blanket of reading pleasures. But then there are also Pamie's novels, the first of which I bought mainly out of blogger solidarity and a lingering sense of MBTV loyalty and, by the way, LOVED, and the second of which I finally got around to buying yesterday. And there's my recent addiction to the ongoing chick-lit-disguised-as-medical-drama that is Grey's Anatomy. So I guess it's not that weird, being both a member of the target demographic and having fairly recent personal, relatable experience with the whole 'round-thirty-and-still-single dynamic that seems to form the foundation of chick lit, that my subconscious would start forming ideas that fall into that category. I don't think I need to be alarmed that this signifies a change of tastes or, horrors, that I've attained a certain level of maturity.

Whatever it is, at least I know what I'll be doing after The Hero Factor is finished.