Romancing the Romance Novelist

We wenches here on the RWR talk about stereotypes a lot. We talk about stereotypical romance characters; we talk about stereotypical romance plots. Being the pirates we are, we bash our heads against expectations in our writing and attempt to bend stereotypes in order to write a fresh book. And though we find these stereotypes frustrating, some of the stereotypes I find most frustrating are the ones out there about romance novelists.

I was watching “Romancing the Stone” this past week. For those of you unfamiliar with this movie, it stars Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. The plot of the movie revolves around romance writer Joan Wilder, played by Kathleen Turner, who travels to Colombia to find her kidnapped sister. She falls in love with a mercenary and the two become romantically involved as they search for a precious stone which the kidnappers want.

I have a love/hate relationship with this movie. It’s an entertaining flick with lots of chemistry between Turner and Douglas. There are plenty of action-packed plot twists and it satisfies my romantic nature, what with the whole HEA.

However, I hate the stereotypes it plays in to about romance writers. In the beginning of the movie Joan Wilder is frumpy, nearly anti-social, and has virtually no sex appeal. She's a cautious mouse living her exciting life through her books. Worse, she is what I always think the public expects romance novelists to be: a bunch of sex-starved, out-of-touch-with-reality ninnies.

She does change as a result of her relationship with Douglas' character. However, her transformation brings up so many feminist/post-feminist arguments that I will save that for someone else's blog.

But, my main issue with how the "romance novelist" is portrayed is that it doesn’t jive with the romance writers I know. We’re an intellectual lot, I think, with plenty of degrees, and advanced degrees, among us. The majority of us are busy with our real lives while we try to carve a niche for ourselves in the industry. We’re doctors, lawyers, teachers, secretaries, librarians, and pirates. We’re wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, and goddesses. With all the nametags and hats we all wear, some of us even wearing multiple nametags/hats at the same time, it's insulting to try to define us so narrowly.

Yet, I know a lot of us write “in the closet” because we don’t want to deal with all the stuff people believe about us.

So, tell us what stereotypes you think exist for romance writers. Which ones do you think are valid and which ones do you think are ridiculous and, if you write in secret, which of them, if any, keep you silent? Also, can you think of any other pop cultural portrayals of romance novelists? Perhaps some that make us out to be the super-writers we are? If so, do tell!

Buried Treasure

Many famous authors have credited writing talent in their early childhood. At ten years of age, Jane Austen wrote snippets of Sense and Sensibility in the form of letters and shared them with her family. She was one of the most influential and honored novelists in English Literature but published four of her novels anonymously. She had a tongue in cheek attitude about her talent, but how could one not win with an opening line like the one in the classic Pride and Prejudice.

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

So my question is this. How did Jane discover her talent? Did she pick up a quill one day in an attempt to express her feelings or did she have thought provoking ideas for stories that needed to be told?

How did you discover your writing talent?

Did you discover it as I did in an American Literature class in high school? Or maybe you wrote in a diary as a child and have always used writing as a form of expression.

I enjoyed writing in high school. I credit my American Literature teacher for my desire to write. She complimented me about an essay I wrote about the miracles of nature. After writing that essay, my desire for writing changed. I discovered that words of praise and persuasion could foster a desire for further talent. But I was a typical high school teenager. At the time, I was more interested in extracurricular activities beyond the literary world. I didn’t take the desire seriously until I thought about a career. When I started applying to colleges I told my mom that I wanted to be a journalist and she laughed and said I needed to be a nurse. She explained the merits of job opportunities and salaries for nurses. I guess she couldn't envision me as a struggling writer. To make a long story short, I was a teen volunteer at the local hospital the summer of my senior year and I enjoyed it, so I took her advice. I don’t regret my career choice completely, because I believe you become the person you are because of life experiences. I like who I am so life has been good to me.

The next time I uncovered my desire to write was after reading The Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich. I stumbled into the world of fan fiction. I never knew such writing existed. I read all that was out there in the Plum fan fiction world. It fueled a desire inside of me to write, and something transformed inside of me in the process. I realized that the more I wrote the more I wanted to write, and with that came more recognition from my peers. With that recognition, I started to believe in my talent, and that stoked a burning desire to write something I could call my own.

Three years ago when I discovered writing again, I would have never believed it would foster a WIP. It took me twenty-four years to find my way back to my buried treasure. But the time is not what is important to me, it is what I choose to do with the discovery that counts.