Aliens, a Love Story

"If it comes to that... I'll do us both."
-Hicks

I've always suspected that my idea of romance and relationships is a little off. Today is only affirming that, because Aliens is on. I love Aliens, way more than Alien. I've been debating every time I'm at Target if I can buy Aliens without owning Alien or if that's against the rules of life. Why do I love Aliens so much?

Well mainly because of Hicks.

Hicks may be up there with my ideal man. He takes charge of a bad situation, he's great with Newt, and he makes snarky comments. All things I enjoy. When he gives Ripley his tracker watch thingy I almost swoon. His promise to kill both of them so they don't get alien embryos all up in their business is one of the most romantic things I've ever heard. Of course is you know anything about Aliens you know Hicks is not the real hero of the story, Ripley is, and that's awesome too.

So since my ideal romance story involves danger and snark and girls that are equally bad ass as guys, it's probably not a surprise that I don't really enjoy romance novels. I have read my fair share. I used to steal them from my grandma when I needed something to read. When I worked at a book store I'd page through them here and there. But I can't really get into them, UNLESS there's a humorous element.

Basically I need the books that are romcoms. I can't do straight gushy love so there better be some shenanigans and brouhaha to keep me interested. You'd think that would be pretty easy to find, but apparently I'm picky. I also want interesting female characters and dialogue that doesn't make me beat my head off the wall. And is it too much to ask that we don't always randomly impregnate people? I mean seriously, there's more to life than knocking up the female lead.

I find it intensely frustrating trying to find new books that meet my criteria. I read the description on the back and it sounds like it MUST be a funny story and then it's just not. It's atrocious. It makes me lose faith in humanity.

And then there's Jenny Crusie.

I love Jennifer Crusie stories with a passion. I first started off with her story Faking It, which has art theft, multiple personalities, orange-pinapple muffins, and fake orgasms. Slowly but surely I started accumulating more and more of her books, including the ones written with Bob Mayer which are my favorite, hands down. Her stories are amazing. Yes, there's romance. Yes, it gets sappy sometimes. But they are hysterical for one thing, and for another despite the absurdity that goes on (and trust me, it can get absurd) they feel more real.

This year I started to suspect I had a Jennifer Crusie problem, because prompted by my friend Erin I decided to start tracking the books I read. I reread Jennifer Crusie novels A LOT. I realized why last week, when I was rather depressed so I decided it was time to read one of the new ones I had been saving. Her books just make me feel better, plain and simple. And realizing that, I made a decision.

For NaNoWriMo this year I'm going to try and write a happy, funny, love story.

I've known about National Novel Writing Month for ages. If you're not familiar, it's basically where you write a 50,000 word story in the month of November. I've debated doing it several times, but I've always had an excuse to not do it (ex: several papers due that month, moving, or taking a lot of vacations). This year though my friend Erin is doing NaNoWriMo and she inspires me to try as well.

There are sooooooo many reasons why this may be the worst year to do it. I am traveling literally every week of the month. I have a vacation with my family. I have a wedding to attend. I have work functions. I have Thanksgiving with my brother. BUT, I'm going to try anyway. I think I'm going to be cutting out TV completely for the month, and that's okay.

I do better with goals. I do even better when people know my goals, and I don't want them to know I've failed. Take my jazzercise progress as proof (I hit my 150 classes before the end of October! WOOT!). I have not been writing as much as I should. I love writing, I have a ton of ideas, and I need to just MAKE MYSELF DO IT.

I actually came to the decision to participate a few weeks ago, but the idea of writing a happy story is new. This may sound weird, but except for my fanfiction, which is admittedly fluffy, all my writing tends to be dark. Not like Stephen King dark, but there's pretty much always some sort of either depressing or scary element. That's fine and dandy, but I really want to challenge myself this year. I want something that makes other people happy and gets them through tough times like Jennifer Crusie does for me.

Will I be successful? Oh lordy, who even knows. But the point is I am determined to try.