Things To Do With Words part 1

status viatoris – being ‘on the way’/being in a state of pilgrimage

In my quest to find more Things To Do With Words that may one day enable me to pay some modest bills, I signed up months ago for two online courses with the London School of Journalism.

“Novel Writing” seemed fairly straight forward, although my experience with fiction is, thus far, limited to a handful of half-finished tales that clog up my computer memory whilst failing to provide enough inspirational impetus to reach any satisfactory conclusion.

I have therefore decided to try my hand at a rather more formulaic writing tactic – at least until my inner Maggie O’Farrell, Umberto Eco or Marian Keyes leaps out to make the transition from wishful thinking to reality – and have a stab at a Mills & Boon.

So for the next few months, accounts of heaving buzzooms, quivering members and those oh so infuriating misunderstandings that throw kinks in the journey to Troo Lurve, must pour from my fingertips if I am to finish the book before the course ends and enlist my tutor’s help in approaching the publishers.

Luckily I am fairly well-versed in the romantic genre, having been lured from the path of highbrow literature in my early teens by a dear elderly neighbour.

A church-going primary school teacher, brown owl extraordinaire, mother of three, grandmother of nine and locally renowned pillar of respectability; she harboured a secret passion for bodice-rippers which she managed (with very little difficulty given my fanciful nature) to pass on.

Visits to her would almost always lead to sneaking back home, suspicious rectangles of ill-disguised trashiness under my jumper or shoved down the back of my jeans.

But as I have since discovered, we are surprisingly numerous us secret devourers of Mills & Boon. A veritable army of educated, well-read, even intelligent women, young and old, who cannot resist the lure of the perfect romance with just the right amount of unbridled lust.

Deprived of a special handshake, and adept at creeping unseen around the dark corners of charity bookshops, we have no way of identifying ourselves to each other but by accident.

Friend spies book on shelf:

“You read Mills & Boon?”

“God, no! My…ummm… grandmother gave it to me.”

“Oh.”

“Why, do you read Mills & Boon?”

“Ummm… yes. Sort of. Sometimes.”

“Me too, actually. Love them.”

“Thank goodness! So do I! Read any really good ones lately?”

That is not to say that I think Mills & Boon always get it right. In fact it would give me a lot of pleasure to be able to read, let alone write, a romance in which the hero is something rather more attainable than a self-made gazillionaire, and where the heroine is a woman I could identify with, as opposed to a  youthfully chaste – but breathtakingly gorgeous, natch – pauper.

With real-life grandes amours and actual coups de foudre being on a par with hens’ teeth in the rarity stakes, reading about them is as close as many of us will ever get. So why not make them just that little bit closer to home?

This is Status Viatoris, fired up with enthusiasm about spreading the luuuurve, in Italy.

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