I finally got to see Julie and Julia over the weekend. Unlike many stories, it doesn’t serve as a means of escape. Rather, there is substance and inspiration woven through it.

The film compares the stories of Julia Child and Julie Powell. Both faced an impasse in their lives; both set out on a search for meaning; both found it in pursuits that many failed to understand. Julia studied at Le Cordon Bleu at a time when all French chefs were men, and she brought that knowledge to American housewives. Decades later, Julie cooked her way through Julia’s first recipe book, 524 recipes in 365 days.

Both women encountered resistance. Julia faced a glass ceiling of her day, and shattered it. Then she spent almost a decade coauthoring her now-famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking, only to have it turned down by Houghton Mifflin.

Julie cooked her way through that book and blogged about it, which prompted questions from friends and family, questions like… “Why are you doing that?!” Even her loving, supportive husband—and I hope if you’re married that you have one of those— even he hit a low point and failed to understand why she needed to do it.

I’ve been absent here, because I’m working on a new novel. After collecting mounds of marketing data, I’ve discovered that I absolutely must write Confessions of a Veteran Software Developer— That’s not a novel, but a true story of my years as a professional software developer. However, I have to find a new title. (Apparently, lots of people love the concept, but no one—and I mean literally no one—cares for the title.) So I have to write Confessions, but I can’t yet, because I’m still planning that book.

Another thing I discovered is that when it comes to fiction, it really doesn’t matter what I write. Really. At some point, it probably will matter, because I’ll have fans that expect certain characteristics from my books. But for now, if I wan’t to be a novelist, the first thing I believe I have to do is to write like Nora Roberts (or Danielle Steel). That is, I don’t have to write the same kind of material they do—Thank God! But I need to write as prolifically as they, or at least as close as I can get.

Nora Roberts has published 211 books over the past 28 years, about one book every 7 weeks. Danielle Steel works at a similar pace.

I have quite a bit of catching up to do.