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Romance in the News

Was anybody else insulted by the recent Washington Post article titled When Romance Writers Gather, The Plot Quickens? While the reporter tried to give the article a smiley face ending, she also managed to get in all the digs she possibly could in the front three quarters of the piece. It felt like she sought out the most outrageous quotes she could find to support her theory that all romance writers are slobbering orgasm-crazy fiends. The female equivalent of sweaty men at a peep show in the old Times Square (before Disney moved in).

Here’s a particularly irritating quote: “You are whining, They’re just writing FORMULAS. To which the astute romance writer will reply: So?”

I’ve never consciously written to a formula in my life. I wonder how many successful romance writers are writing formulaic prose? (Let’s hold Harlequin/Silhouette and their secret baby/marriage of convenience penchant aside for the moment.) Is Linda Howard or Nora writing formula? Is anyone who’s successful really sitting down in front of their computers, rubbing their hands together and saying to themselves “okay, let’s make this novel fit the formula.”

I seriously doubt it. While I agree there may be things that are universal themes – good v. evil, the heroic quest, Romeo/Juliette, etc… – I just don’t agree that the majority of romance is written to some secret formula.

Then in a schitzophrenic move, a new article appeared on the Washington Post site. This one titled Romance Novels Still Fighting For Respect by Ron Charles. This guy gets it. He actually took a moment to listen to what the successful writers and booksellers were saying at the recent RWA convention in DC. He had the good sense to talk to my friend, Rosemary Potter of Rosemary’s Romance Books in Brisbane, Australia. As many Aussies do, she no doubt gave him straight talk about what’s what in the romance world.

This part of his article struck me most:

In a sense, romance still labors under the burden that used to weigh on all fiction. Puritan sermons in the 17th century were spiked with warnings about reading novels. Thomas Jefferson railed against novels, too, claiming they were “a great obstacle to good education…a poison [that] infects the mind. The result is a bloated imagination, sickly judgment, and disgust towards all the real businesses of life.”

He went on to talk about Eloisa James. While Eloisa is an interesting case of a highly educated woman writing and succeeding at romance, she isn’t by any means the only one. I’m a lawyer. So is Caridad Pinero, Nalini Singh, JR Ward, and a number of others I could name. Then there’s Jennifer Cruise – also a literature professor, if I remember correctly. There are lots and lots of other highly educated women writing and reading romance. So why does everyone assume romance is for “stupid” women with nothing better to do?

It’s insulting and incorrect. Articles like the first one I mentioned only play into prolonging the myth. At least Mr. Charles gets it. Kudos to him for telling the truth and not going for the cheap laugh at the expense of a legitmate, successful, and growing industry.