Is This the Bus to Cartagena? Worst Places To Write...

I LOVE the movie "Romancing the Stone" on so many levels, for so many reasons...well, we could start with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner and move on from there to the wonderful scene where Ms. Turner as the author Joan Wilder finishes her latest improbable romance about Angelina and Her Soul Mate Jesse. The music soars, the author weeps and the cat is unimpressed but knows there's tuna in the deal somewhere if he plays his cards right. Somehow there isn't that much drama around my house when I finish a book (and I've only once in my life typed the words "The End"). I don't get to bundle up the bulky manuscript and appear in the no-doubt stylish offices of Carina Press in person and wait while my editor weeps over the sheer goodness of my latest novel...before we sweep off to lunch or cocktails, as Joan and her glamorous publisher do in the movie.

(Although Carina is publishing my latest paranormal novel about Ancient Egypt on Monday...there might have been weeping and probably some gnashing of teeth during the editing process by someone over my interesting use of grammar and italics....but I digress....see subtly inserted cover of new book to the left...)

Yeah, well, an author can dream, right?Or pull out the dvd and watch the movie again! BUT the point of this week's Word Whores post is actually supposed to be about the worst place we've ever had to write and since for me that was a bus in the middle of mountains (in Mexico not Colombia), I immediately flashed to the scenes in the movie where Joan has boarded the wrong bus, which I would totally do. She's not actually trying to write anything during that part of the movie, although I'm sure as a veteran romance author, she was subconsciously soaking up atmosphere and colorful bits that would appear in her next novel.

OK, so more years ago than I choose to discuss here, my Alabama high school Spanish class took a field trip to Mexico. On this side of the border we traveled in fairly modern, comfortable Greyhound buses but in Mexico we had an ever changing assortment of local autobuses and for our day trip to Taxco, we must have had a moonlighting Formula One race car driver at the wheel. WOW, he drove at high speed around some of the most hairpin curves I've ever seen (pass on the wrong side on a curve with a sheer drop on the side - no problem!)....and yes, I was trying to write at the time. Probably to distract myself from the knowledge of  impending certain death from falling down a mountainside after a head-on collision. Which didn't happen because here I am, writing about it!

Many things resulted from that youthful trip to Mexico, including my extremely original and no-doubt-deathless short story about the beautiful blond daughter (niece?) of the American Ambassador to Mexico sweeping the tall, dark and handsome matador whose name now escapes me, right off his feet and into romance. No, you'll never be able to read this epic because unaccountably the editors of Teen magazine declined to publish it, thereby blighting my writing career for decades to come. (Hold a grudge? Who me?)

So there's my story...I actually prefer to write in the peace and quiet of my room, with no other people present. I can't write in a public place like so many authors do. My Muse gets very tense - maybe she was traumatized by that bus trip to Taxco too!

Your assignment, Dear Reader, is to throw some random words at me in the comments, so we Word Whores can pick a few and generate flash fiction next week!  Pretty please? I have to gather up my quota of words or the other Whores will glare at me (just kidding, guys!)....you know, maybe some stream of consciousness words like, oh, pyramid, Nile, pharaoh...just anything will do LOL!

And here's the original trailer for "Romancing the Stone":