Romancing the Whip

Skitters "helping" me to write. That's the MS for Personal Demons on the monitor behind her. Can't see it? Either could I. When I put her on the floor, she waited for me to start typing then sunk her claws into my thigh until I picked her up and pet her for a couple minutes - four times already today. This is not a "once in a while" trick of hers. Remind me again why writers have cats? Oh yeah - blog fodder! Anyway... Take the way-back machine with me here for a moment. The movie Romancing the Stone opens in a western scene. The heroine is faced by the bad guy for the final showdown. They fight, something, something, something, then the good guy Jessie sweeps in, blah, blah, chase on horseback, blah, blah, and then the bad guy - "The man who killed my parents, raped my sister, shot my dog, burned down my ranch and stole my bible" (I'm paraphrasing here. I can't remember the exact speech) - dies. Cue triumphant western theme music ala The Magnificent Seven. "And then me and my beloved Jessie were together." The music swells as a blonde busting out of her corset clinches the cowboy. "Forever." Cut to Kathleen Turner crying here eyes out at a typewriter. She carefully types out The End, sits back, wipes her sniffly nose and says. "That's good." Why am I telling you this? First off, it's a great window back to the days of having to type your MS out on paper. Ugh. It also captures pretty well that sense of relief and joy on coming to the end of a novel. Why was that old movie on my mind? Because I finally got to the end of my first draft (once removed) of Personal Demons. (Yay!) Swelling music? Daubing eyes? More like happy dance around my office. Oh all right. The story totally ends with a mushy happily ever after scene. I've come to grips with the fact that while I write pretty hard-core explicit sex scenes, lurking under all that leather is a big, fat, three-hanky love story. First person who calls me a closeted romantic will regret it though. *mean stare* I'm serious here. *glower* Don't make me sic Skitters on you.