Shop Girl

I used to come and watch you for a few hours each day. I would press my face against the shop’s display window and stare at your extravagant beauty. You modeled there, but I knew for a fact that you weren’t one of those dumb, painted mannequins; no, you were alive and radiant.

I let my eyes soak up your lush exquisiteness, your smooth skin… oh, how I longed to touch and caress you. How I longed to march straight into that shop and run my hands all over you. But I knew I couldn’t. Why, you ask? Because if I ever did hold you, I wouldn’t be able to let go.

I even went to look at you when I went out with my girlfriend. I know that was totally out of line, but I couldn’t help it; you were so beautiful. I had many rows with my girl about you, I would tell her that she was more important, but she wouldn’t buy it – I can’t blame her, because I had been lying then. In the end, she finally made me choose between you and her. I was thrown out of the apartment within the next minute.

When characters leap off the pages. Literally.

Some authors have this amazing ability to make their characters so real and vivid you feel as if  they were sitting in the room with you, telling you their story. I love those characters. I wish I could write them, but I know that’s beyond my current abilities.

There are these characters… and then are those who actually jump out of the pages. I watched Ruby Sparks yesterday. It tells about a writer with a horrible case of Writer’s Block who one day dreamed about a girl called Ruby Sparks and started writing feverishly about her, only to have her step out of the pages and become a real person and the object of his affection.

On Cheese and Writing.

I’m not talking about actual cheese here – though I did have a yummy grilled cheese sandwich this morning – but rather the things that make us go, “God that’s cheesy.” They’re a common occurrence in romance movies, though they do slip in occasionally in other kinds of movies; they’re not limited to sweet moments of unconditional love. A speech or a fighting scene or even a gory scene from a horror movie can be cheesy. But of course it’s not limited to movies, cheesiness is something that worries writers day and night.

While cheesiness in real life can be endearing and okay, for some reason it’s frowned upon in books. Even movies get cut some slack for some reason, while a book can be criticized heavily if deemed cheesy by the readers. But is that really fair?