Last month I made a hard push through a very late night to complete my first contest entry. This involved cutting 5 pages from a chapter and 3 from the (newly written) synopsis to fit everything into the contest's requirements. I'm a night owl so when I say it was a late night, you can believe it was a doozy. I knew I was in trouble when the birds started to wake up and I was still at my laptop working. That weekend, I attended an all-day writing seminar that left me with a fantastic tool for editing and forming structure and a horrible sense that every word I've written so far is total crap. Ever since then, I've been struggling to generate word count on the WIP. It'll happen eventually (probably) mostly because it pokes and prods at me incessantly and I have to let these people out of my head or else surrender to the insanity once and for all, but for right now: blah.
The contest entry experience did help to hammer out broad plot strokes and some smaller character moments and in the ensuing two weeks, other excellent ideas on both have furrowed through my cloudy brain. But even trying to push through to complete the rough draft by opening new Word files for a "fresh" page has left me frustrated and pissy. My roadblocks appear firmly entrenched for the moment.
In the meantime, I've been fixated on the adverts for Miami Social, Bravo's newest exploitation of the rich and shameless. Amidst early morning reruns of my beloved West Wing, I'm inundated with previews for every bleeping Bravo reality show under the sun from NY Prep and The Fashion Show (really? another fashion show? sigh) to the endless incarnations of the Jersey housewives reunion show. And now the social elite of Miami joins the fold.
Talk about market saturation.
I don't do reality shows. I've never seen The Amazing Race, The Apprentice, The Bachelor, or his rejects on The Bachelorette. I watched a Survivor episode once - Come on! It was Australia! - and have seen, I think, an hour of American Idol, one I greatly wish returned. I've got enough reality in my life; I don't need to watch television for some bastardized idea of it.
So a show like Miami Social would usually barely blip on my radar except for one eensy weensy thing: The Voice.
One of the men on this show has this incredible voice, deep and plummy, nearly tactile in its seductive qualities. Sure he seems to always be in a suit, in Miami (poor dear), and while Michael Westen can pull this off in Burn Notice, I have my doubts about anyone else evincing such effortless aplomb. Thus I'm left with a Thurston Howell-on-the-lido-deck vibe that could be eminently snarkable but is completely canceled out by The Voice. Whenever I hear that voice, this frisson of pleasure literally streaks up my spine. I'm watching the commercials on my DVRd shows just to hear it; it's almost enough for me to break my reality-show- boycotting streak. Almost.
The guy's voice is potent is all I'm saying. He could likely wear a bag over his attractive head and still talk me into just about anything as long as he just kept talking. It's akin to my visceral response to Captain Jack Sparrow's wicked reply when accused of threatening Miss Swan:
Only a little.
Oh yes, please.
And if that can't stimulate my muse (the fickle wench), I'm in serious trouble.
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