[Writer Blog] – Guilty Pleasures

Guilty Pleasures. We all have them. Mine are musicals: SCRUBS: MY MUSICAL, DR. HORRIBLE’S SING-ALONG-BLOG, Man of La Mancha, Forever Plaid, etc. I also love shows that are music intensive without being musicals, like Phineas and Ferb and MegaMind.

Most of those I can probably get a “what’s so guilty about THOSE? Those shows ROCK!” Why yes. Yes, they do. I’m not embarrassed by my guilty pleasures, but I do sometimes think I should be doing something else while I indulge. The “guilty” part of the pleasure comes in the Disney part of most of this. I love Disney musicals. I do. My favorite animated classic is Robin Hood. Mary Poppins is up there. But I also dig The Princess Diaries – though NOT musical and Enchanted/.

There’s something “escapist” about them. They’re cute and fun and the songs get stuck in your head – which is why the Phineas and Ferb soundtrack leapt off the rack and into my basket at Target last weekend and is on high rotation on my iPod…yup, that’s it. They’re mental chocolate or mental ice cream without the brain freeze. And they’re TOTALLY necessary to help keep everything in balance.

I have a few writers that I read that fall into this type of category. The “guilty” part of the pleasure comes when I think I should be writing my own stuff while reading these awesome books, or reading something else for whatever reason – and I would TOTALLY be “caught dead” reading them. In fact, my “guilty pleasure” authors seem to be the authors I recommend most to people. Why? Because they’re FUN. They’re funny – when called for – and sometimes the readers I’m recommending authors to are having a tough time of it and need to “escape” their lives and take a break to enjoy some mental chocolate.

So…who do I put in my Phineas and Ferb reading list? Who are my ice cream authors? The ones I’ve mentioned before – Rosemary Clement-Moore, Shanna Swendson, Rachel Caine, Carolyn Hennessy, Jim Butcher, and Amber Benson. There are more…these come to immediate mind. I love their books, most of them I like a lot as people (I’ve never met Carolyn Hennessy or Amber Benson). These books – by no means an exhaustive list – let me take a break from reality. They’re snarky and adventurous and sometimes teach a lesson or two – three are Young Adult, three are not. They’re across the board in terms of light to dark, but all are writers I look forward to seeing new material from, and writers I want to emulate without being them. I think by reading my guilty pleasure writers -like watching/enjoying my guilty pleasure movies/television shows – I develop as a writer. And so can you.

Tags: guilty pleasures, Phineas and Ferb, Rachel Caine, reading, Rosemary Clement-Moore, Writing