Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Why I’ll never make it as a chick lit author
1. I refuse to work a pun into my title.
From the blurb for Kim Wong Keltner’s The Dim Sum of All Things,
Have you ever wondered:
- Why Asians love “Hello Kitty”?
- What the tattooed Chinese characters really say?
- How to achieve feng shui for optimum make-out sessions?
- Where Asian cuties meet the white guys who love them?
. . . which leads me to,
2. I cannot write saccharine cutesy-pie synopses.
3. I don’t accessorize well.
From Sophie Kinsella’s Remember Me. Emphasis mine:
When twenty-eight-year-old Lexi Smart wakes up in a London hospital, she’s in for a big surprise. Her teeth are perfect. Her body is toned. Her handbag is Vuitton. Having survived a car accident—in a Mercedes no less—Lexi has lost a big chunk of her memory, three years to be exact, and she’s about to find out just how much things have changed.
4. I’m not good with cliches.
From Jennifer Weiner’s In Her Shoes. Emphasis mine:
Meet Rose Feller, a thirty-year-old high-powered attorney with a secret passion for romance novels. She has an exercise regime she’s going to start next week, and she dreams of a man who will slide off her glasses, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she’s beautiful. She also dreams of getting her fantastically screwed-up, semi-employed little sister to straighten up and fly right.
Meet Rose’s sister, Maggie. Twenty-eight years old and drop-dead gorgeous. Although her big-screen stardom hasn’t progressed past her left hip’s appearance in a Will Smith video, Maggie dreams of fame and fortune — and of getting her big sister on a skin-care regimen.
and
5. All the trite titles have been taken.
Meg Cabot has Boy Meets Girl, Every Boy’s Got One, and The Boy Next Door. Jennifer Weiner has Good in Bed, In Her Shoes — and in case I wanted to consider any polyglot shenanigans, Gut im Bett and En Sus Zapatos, too. Carly Phillips has Sealed with a Kiss, Claire Cook has Life’s a Beach, and as I have already whined, Megan McCafferty has Sloppy Firsts, damn her. (I really wanted that one for my romance.)
See? It’s hopeless, I tell you. Hopeless.
Can I count this as an early Smart Bitches Day Post?
***
Live blogging: tonight at 7:00 Pacific. See you there!
Make it 7:40 PM. Gotta eat first.
Did I say 7:40? I meant 8:20! I bet you’ve all bailed . . .
D.
There are plenty of things that are far worse than hopeless… 😉
LMAO and it is too early for this
Put on a pair of pink marabou slippers and you’ll be writing about the perils of menstruation and boyfriends in no time.
I don’t accessorize well.
You’re ahead of me: I don’t accessorize at all.
O’Brien: Hoffman in pink fuzzy slippers would be a sight to behold.