Last week, I told you about my perceived cluelessness when it comes to writing contemporary-style romance. A few of you had some great recs, and after yet another thought-provoking discussion with MaveFave Keira (I owe her so much!), I’ve spent the last few days curled up with various women’s fiction novels. Flirting With Forty, fellow Eastsider Jane Porter’s novel-turned-soon-to-be-made-for-tv movie, really has deep POV nailed down. Also-Eastsider Shannon McKelden’s recently re-released Venus Envy (let the spam comments commence) does “deliciously smitten hero” in a way that makes me wish Luke Stanton was stalking me. And fellow Washingtonian Lisa Kleypas’s Blue Eyed Devil mixes contemporary issues with her classic, lyrical writing so well, it makes me wonder why I ever swore I’d never read her new, first-person Texas-set novels. (Which is actually the same thing I thought after reading Sugar Daddy last year, but whatever.)

So what have I learned thus far? (Besides being sick is a great excuse to get to all the TBRs stacked up next to my bed.) Well, two things. One, what I said to Keira the other day actually turned out to be true. Which is weird and not weird, because I knew it was true when I said it, but it was one of those you know it’s true but it doesn’t make it any easier to sit down and do it. Oh, what I said…right. I said there was nothing in the world that makes me want to write my books more than reading other people’s books.

Good books, bad books, books I’d never write and books so close to mine I want to jump out of the nearest barouche. All books make me want to write my books. Similarly, watching very good tv (How I Met Your Mother, House) and very good movies (Becoming Jane, Becoming Jane) makes me want to write books. But in the last year — ever since I stopped watching tv — I’ve watched zero tv. As in, no tv. At all. Even sneaked. And the number of movies I’ve watched has dwindled to almost zero, too. And the number of books I’ve read…well, you get the picture.

I’ve been living with a scripted entertainment deficit, and it seems to have gotten to me.

So I popped in my Sex and the City DVDs after last week’s post, and this week I read a few books. Which brings me to thing I learned number two: I desperately want to finish my book. My historical book. Which makes no sense, seeing as how I’ve been building up my contemporary stores, but there you have it. I miss Roman. I love Roman. I want Roman to get his HEA, dammit, and I want him to get laid already. Desperately.

YOUR TURN: How do you feel about entertainment input? Do you live a deficit-inducing lifestyle? Does watching really well-written tv make you want to compete, in a sense, with the emotion/witticism/characterization/etc? Do you keep up your reading while you’re writing, or do you put it away for fear you’ll accidentally copy a voice/plot/etc? Do you ever want your characters to get laid, or am I projecting? Oh, maybe don’t answer that…