I’m going to embarrass myself today by confessing what REALLY obsessed me after that fabulous March 25 phone call telling me I was a finalist:  glamour.

I mean, Romance is a glamorous business, isn’t it?  Open your favorite novel, and the heroine’s resplendent in a teal silk gown or—depending on your genre of choice—scarlet Jimmy Choos and a butter-soft leather miniskirt.

She whirls through a perfumed ballroom, or—again, depending on your genre of choice—races down Ventura Boulevard in a spankin’-new Ferrari, with a gorgeous Italian billionaire by her side.  (Let’s all just pause for a moment to imagine her life.  Beats the heck out of whatever you were actually doing thirty seconds ago, am I right?)

Now, some of you will say, “Forget glamour–I love the down-home, ordinary-folks kind of romance, where the heroine’s a small-town cop and the hero’s a cowboy.”  I ask you this:  does the cowboy have all his hair, and a killer smile, and rock-hard abs, and does he generally refrain from making fart jokes and stinking up the heroine’s car with the leftover half of a Big Mac he “forgot” he stashed under the driver’s seat?  If the answer’s yes, and my life’s even remotely representative of reality for most people, that’s glamorous, baby!

And romance writers:  they’re glamorous too….

Right?

Let me be very clear here: I hate the stupid stereotype of romance writers in pink-feathered kitten heels, toting miniature poodles dyed some horrific shade of lavender. I looked around at RWA Nationals: not a feathered shoe or lavender lapdog to be seen. But, still…compared to accounting or landscape architecture or clerking at the Piggly Wiggly, romance writing is downright glamorous.  (Did you SEE the spray of diamonds Nora Roberts wore at the Awards Ceremony?  Those rocks were the genuine article, girlfriend!  Don’t see many lawyers or molecular biologists decked out like that.)

But the actual practice of romance writing is not glamorous.  At all.

From what Sisters say on our email loop, most of the 2009 Finalists head for the keyboard in old flannel PJ pants and t-shirts blotched with years of coffee stains.   I bet even Nora Roberts has a few pairs of each of those, and probably the grubby bunny slippers to go with ‘em.

So getting ready to go to Nationals as a Golden Heart Finalist—the receptions! the Awards Ceremony! the editor and agent appointments!—was a surreal combination of terrifying and thrilling for many of us.  Some modicum of glamour was going to be required.

Forget the rigors of trying to get published; for awhile, the real ordeal was trying to walk in heels without tripping over our gowns and face-planting at the feet of Jo Beverly or Jessica Faust or Julia Quinn.

And, um—let’s just say I personally needed a little more work getting glamorous than most.  I may have been a Babe once, but that was before I gave birth to a couple babies of my own.

Some fellow Ruby-Slippered Sisters at least have day jobs requiring sleek professionalism, but to make the ordeal tougher for me, I’m a teacher:  I’m on my feet all day, working with teens who could care less what I wear.  With my own two kids hurling toys, books, and dirty clothes in every direction, a long commute in a car with broken AC, heaps of student papers to grade each night, dinner to cook, and multiple pets with a deep philosophical commitment to shedding, I have no time for glamour.  My waistbands tend to be elastic, my shoes are the chunky kind built for arch support, and, most days, my main accessory is cat hair.

I knew I was in trouble early on when some other Finalists mentioned having professional photographers take their pictures for the RWA website.   I’d taken a snapshot in my back yard after church (at least my hair was brushed!) holding the camera out in my left hand.  I nearly fainted when someone mentioned there’d be a Jumbotron at the ceremony.

JUMBOTRON?

I made plans to yell, “Look—Brad Pitt in the back of the room!  And he’s naked!” when my picture appeared twenty feet high onscreen.

It was clearly time for a makeover.  Deadline: mid-July.

A fairy godmother might have been handy, but no need:  I had my Sisters.  On our email loop, we talked about lots of serious things–like queries and revisions and GMC and the joys of Black Moments and how not to crumple when you get three rejections on the same day.  But sometimes it was like the Girls’ Room between classes in Junior High:  “Here’s how you apply eyeshadow so you look sexy, and not like an overmedicated raccoon…”    “Here’s how you keep your hair from frizzing in D.C. humidity….”    “Here’s how to accessorize a purple gown so you don’t nauseate everyone in eyeball range.”

And, boy, did I do some serious rejoicing when several veteran Finalists confirmed that almost nobody at Nationals wears pantyhose.  (Amen, Sisters!  My no-longer-svelte thighs and I owe you a debt of eternal gratitude!)

Anyhow, with the benefit of the Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood’s collective wisdom, I went for it:  I blew a week’s grocery budget at a fancy cosmetics store…while my four-year-old ran around smearing samples over his body like war-paint.  I bought so many new shoes, Zappos.com gave me VIP status…and my 10-year-old daughter honed her sarcasm skills while I learned to walk in heels without looking like I’d just downed a fifth of vodka.  (Honestly, a fifth of vodka might have helped.)

I whitened my teeth (urgh—the foul-tasting goo!), got my first-ever pedicure (and serious bruises from that darned automatic massage chair), dyed my hair (scalp burns!), and bought me some Spanx (no problems with the Spanx, actually—love, love, love those miraculous things!).

While in Washington, I felt a little like I was in disguise.  Heck, sometimes I felt like I was in drag.  But I don’t think I embarrassed myself too badly….for which I must also thank the total strangers in the first-floor Marriott Wardman Park ladies’ room who, just minutes before my editor appointment, let me know I’d managed to tuck the hem of my Little Black Skirt into the central panel of my aforementioned Spanx.  (Bless you, kind and intrepid souls for saving me from the kind of mortification that would have required a new pen-name.)

In the end, I think of the whole experience as valuable research.  Now, when I squeeze one of my heroines into a corset, or weave pearls through her hair, or make her wear pointy little dancing shoes or a nightgown with a hundred buttons down the front, I truly have a feel for what I’m putting her through.

And just because there has to be a sappy moment somewhere in this blog, I’ll mention that when my four-year-old saw me in the purple gown, he actually said, “Wow, Mommy, you look like a real-life princess.”  Sigh!  Just at that moment, I felt like one.

And I must confess—although I’m happily writing this post in flip-flops and spaghetti-sauce-stained sweats—I had a blast wearing my ruby-red heels at Nationals as one of the Ruby-Slippered Sisters.  It’s a memory I’ll treasure even when I’m an eighty-year-old grandma… hunched over my keyboard, no doubt, in a ratty old bathrobe and orthopedic shoes.

What about you:  how wide is the gap between the life you read (or write) about in romances, and the one you’re busily living?  Which one do you really prefer?

I’ll be giving away a 25-page critique (or thereabouts…if Chapter 2 ends on page 28, send the extra three!) or a fabulous Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood mug to one lucky commenter.