Aug
Saturday Salon: Romance of the Author
The career of being an author was romanticized for me from a young age when I read Harriet the Spy and started keeping a detailed journal.
Then there was (of course) Romancing the Stone, which I saw after I’d started reading romance books. How fun to see the stories I’d just recently discovered discussed on screen (although as a child, I didn’t understand many of the stereotypes). One of the early scenes that features romance writer Joan Wilder crying over her manuscript is a classic. However, I still haven’t cried while writing any of my stories.
Two of my favorite films featuring somewhat humorous looks at both published and aspiring authors are Room with a View and Cold Comfort Farm. As mocking as E.M. Forster is in his portrayal of writer Eleanor Lavish, I love her over the top aesthetic and unapologetic use of other people’s lives for her fiction.
If you haven’t seen Cold Comfort Farm, I highly recommend it. Protagonist Flora intends to write a novel when she’s fifty and has gathered life experience. You can see her early attempt at literary greatness at 1 minute and 25 seconds.
Romance books aren’t strangers to the use of authors as protagonists. In Georgette Heyer’s Sylvester, the heroine is an author, in Julia Quinn’s Romancing Mr. Bridgerton, the heroine is revealed to be a gossip columnist. Do you have a favorite book or movie featuring a writer?
Aug 18, 2012
1:17 am
Maya Rodale’s Writing Girl Series – all the heroines are newspaper women!
Love the movie, THE SECRET WINDOW based on a Stephen King novella. Stars Johnny Depp as a writer who goes bananas after discovering his wife has been cheating on him and starts battling his alter ego. Makes you think twice about being a reclusive writer. ; )
Happy Saturday Everyone!
Aug 18, 2012
1:36 am
Right, Stephen King! I meant to mention MISERY as another horror example of writers in fiction. I saw the movie with my mom and she spent the entire film hiding her head in my lap.
Aug 18, 2012
2:09 am
Oooh, MISERY – good one, Sabrina! I just thought of another movie that featured an author as a character, THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR based on the book by R.A. Dick. Of course, Captain Gregg was the author but since he was dead, Mrs. Muir had to take the credit. I’m claiming the movie because, frankly, it was one of the rare times when the movie WAS better than the book.
Aug 18, 2012
11:09 am
Cold Comfort Farm is actually one of those film is better than book situations. Although, my sister just informed me that when CCF was written it was actually futuristic.
Aug 18, 2012
8:18 am
I LOVE Maya’s Writing Girls series and I can’t wait for Charlotte’s novella and Anabelle and Knightly’s story!
Aug 18, 2012
4:41 pm
Agreed. Her books are so much fun.
Aug 18, 2012
3:28 pm
Oh, Amy! Maya’s books are so fun–I love that they’re all writing girls! And, The Secret Window is one of my favorites.
Aug 18, 2012
1:28 am
Loving these insights Miss Darby!
One that instantly comes to mind is Jo from Little Women, I was much the introvert, dreamer tomboy sort growing up and I recall being in full understanding of her while reading it.
Xo
Noor
Aug 18, 2012
1:37 am
Definitely Jo too!
Aug 18, 2012
2:10 am
Monumentally, we should never forget Jo March. : )
Aug 18, 2012
8:17 am
Great post Sabrina!
One of my favorite romances featuring writers is Laura Lee Guhrke’s With Seduction in Mind. In fact, it’s the story of two writers as both Daisy and Sebastian are authors-she an aspiring writer and he a reknowned novelist/playwright struggling to write again whom Daisy eviserates in a scathing review. Sebastian’s editor Marlowe puts them together to help each other, and as Laura puts it, that’s when the sparks fly, the trouble starts, and the seduction begins.
It’s one of my favorite LLGs for sure.
There’s also Sara Fielding in Lisa Kleypas’ Dreaming of You. She rises to fame as the author of Mathilda. Many consider it to be Lisa’s masterpiece, for good reason. The scene with Derek and Sara’s spectacles gets to me every time.
One of my favorite movies about writers is Never Been Kissed where Drew Barrymore is a copy editor at a Chicago newspaper who goes undercover at a local high school to prove herself and get a shot at being at being a full fledged reporter. A really cute sweet movie if a bit implausible.
Aug 18, 2012
11:11 am
Oh, good ones! Loved all of those. And I rarely mind implausible scenarios as long as character motivations are realistic.
Aug 18, 2012
8:19 am
I love Minerva in Sabrina Jefferies How to Woo a Reluctant Lady. Such a great character and the fact that she used the hero as a character in her book so that she could bash him without anyone knowing! Very Heyer-esque!
Aug 18, 2012
11:11 am
I can’t believe I haven’t read this! Buying now.
Aug 18, 2012
1:53 pm
Oh the whole Hellions of Halstead Hall series is brilliant. Read them all!!
Aug 18, 2012
11:49 am
I, too, love Sabrina Jeffries “How to Woo A Reluctant Lady”. Minerva and Giles bounced off the page in the novels even before their book came to pass. I love when characters do that. Makes you really look forward to their book.
Lisa Kleypas, Laura Lee Guhrke and Maya Rodale have also written good books with authors as heroes. I looking forward to Maya’s latest book, “Seducing Mr. Knightly.”
Aug 18, 2012
1:24 pm
I love Cold Comfort Farm and many of the books mentioned above! However, I believe Penelope Featherington is the gossip columnist in Romacing Mr. Brigerton, not Colin; Penelope is Mrs. Whistledown.
Aug 18, 2012
4:39 pm
You are right. Not sure where my mind was! Will change the post.
Aug 18, 2012
3:33 pm
But my favorite writing movie by far is Stranger than Fiction, in which Will Ferrel plays the main character in Emma Thompson’s work-in-progress. The scene when he sits in his apartment and refuses to respond to anything is my favorite thing ever.
But as for romances with writers in them? I have to give a shout out to Lisa Kleypas for Dreaming of You, where the heroine is writing about the dark corners of London and puts herself squarely in the path of Derek Craven, former prostitute, now gaming king. I love that book. It might be a reason for my current casino obsession.
Aug 18, 2012
4:43 pm
Haha. I’ve never seen that movie but that’s hilarious. Sounds like a day in the Ballroom.
And love that Kleypas book.
Aug 18, 2012
5:00 pm
I loved STRANGER THAN FICTION. So many great scenes, but my favorite was when the main character tells the professor about the words narrated in his head. “Little did he know? The voice said, ‘Little did he know?’ I’ve written entire books about ‘little did he know.’”
Now every once in a while, when I’m about to pull a fast one on my characters, I like to say out loud, ‘Little did she know …”
And then there’s CCF’s, “The golden orb…”
Thanks for a fun post.
Aug 18, 2012
5:16 pm
Great examples, Sabrina! I have a soft spot for Adaptation. It showed the mundane-ness of writing, of struggling against yourself and your better angels to get something down on paper.
Also, I can’t help but adore Romancing the Stone. The opening scene where she’s crying over the ending of her own book, and then throws the plate of cat food in the fire in a romantic gesture? If only I had a cat…
Aug 18, 2012
5:25 pm
Oh My Gosh I just realised that I forgot one of my favourite romances ever! The Last Hellion by Loretta Chase. Brilliant writer heroine, perfectly delicious hero
Aug 18, 2012
8:23 pm
Love the Last Hellion. Such a wonderfully tough heroine.
Aug 18, 2012
8:26 pm
Love this post and discussion, Sabrina. Everyone has come up wiht some great books. My offering is one of my all time favorite trad regencies, Impudent Lady by Joan Smith. Both hero and heroine are writers, rather obviously inspired by Lord Byron and Jane Austen. It’s charming and funny. I hope it’s available in ebook. I’ve bought several used copies and lent them to friends. it’s one of those books that never seems to come back
Aug 18, 2012
8:52 pm
I just downloaded Imprudent Lady although I am convinced I read it years ago when I was reading everything in my sister’s library. Nonetheless, now I have it. These posts always do damage to my wallet.
Aug 19, 2012
11:39 am
That is a great movie clip. I haven’t seen Cold Comfort Farm in ages. I will have to revisit it soon!
One of my favorite writer scenes isn’t in the book where the writer is the hero. It is when the writer of the famous “pecked to death by pigeons” scene gets to read his book for an appreciative audience and gets a little carried away. I believe that happens in Julia Quinn’s What Happens in London.
Now I am off to buy Dreaming of You because that sounds awesome….