The Notebook

I finally watched The Notebook last night. And I bawled. (Stop snickering, Rene!)

I read the book years ago, after it first came out, and I've been waiting for the right time to watch the movie. I knew I would need a big box of tissues.

Needless to say, the love story was fantastic. I loved Noah and Allie and how they finally (yes, I'm giving away the ending) find their own happily ever after.

The only thing that bothered me concerned a plot device. After Allie goes away, Noah writes to her, every single day, for a year. She never receives any of the letters because her goodie two-shoes mother keeps them all. Of course, this isn't revealed until years later. I dunno. Maybe it's because I'm a big fan of the miniseries North and South and the same thing happened on it - Orry Maine and Madeline Fabray write to one another, but her father keeps all the letters from reaching Orry or Madeline. They find out after she marries, of course. But they get their happily ever after later (though not in the book - just the miniseries.)

Anyway, it made me think a lot about how I want to avoid that type of plot device because, well, to me, it's so darn easy to do. Instead, strengthening the internal conflict between the two would have been a better choice. But that's just my opinion. :-)

In Writing News...

I did write this weekend. Not as much as I wanted to, of course, but since it's been two weeks since I've written anything new on the manuscript, anything is an achievement. I'm also working on some non-fiction article ideas, one of which is editing a collection of letters from a WWII soldier stationed at the Fort Robinson POW camp. I simply cannot let these letters stay in a dusty drawer in the archives. They are so good that they need to be shared with the world.