WritersDigest.com

I had a subscription to Writer's Digest magazine for years, and I still receive their e-newsletters and visit their website. They've recently updated it and said to help them get the word out, so I figured why not. So here it is:

http://writersdigest.com/

I've found a lot of helpful writing advice and inspiration in their pages, whether paper or virtual.

If you're looking for nitty-gritty, you can't go wrong with their series of writing books. They probably have something published on just about any topic that interests you or would help in your writing -- and, if not, maybe you're just the person to author it! For my own writing, I found especially helpful summaries of research on everyday life in Victorian England and America, and I know I'll be looking to their bookshelves and website again when it's time to start submitting to agents.

Theological injunctions against romance novels

In the spirit of the Cracked piece, I share this advice against romance novels from a conservative Christian advice column:

Almost two years ago I nearly gave my virginity away to the first guy who asked for no other reason than loneliness. Since puberty I've had sex on my brain. I'm a 23-year-old Christian woman and it just doesn't seem normal for me to think about sex as often as I do. ...

Sometimes I think I am a sex addict and that the only reason I am still "pure" is that after that near-miss, I just knew that I shouldn't date until I was ready to get married. I guess my main problem is that during my weak times, if I get overtired, overstimulated, or overstressed, I'll give in to more than just the thoughts. I'll read a heap of those secular romance novels then repent and pray that when I am half asleep I won't touch myself in an inappropriate manner. Last night was one of my failures and I've yet to repent because I am afraid I'll do the same thing tonight. There are times that I feel like my prayers go unanswered because my behavior is nearly habitual. I may only fall in this area six or seven times a year but I've been going on like this for at least eight years. There is supposed to be no limit to the number of times one can repent of the same sin, but . . . [...]

And the response:

[...] Now about that self-fondling. Naturally it troubles you; but if you've repented, then God has forgiven you (yes, really), you needn't listen to the Accuser, and the practical issue is what you can do to avoid it in the future. The idea going through your head right now — that even though you're full of regret about last night, you shouldn't repent because you might fail again — is just another of the Accuser's tricks. In fact there are several things you can do. If you think a bit, you'll find that you have certain habits that awaken the temptation to touch yourself in inappropriate ways. You mention two kinds of awakeners just in your letter: One of them is letting yourself get overtired and overstressed, the other is trying to get a loneliness fix by reading secular romance novels. Exhaustion is the enemy of virtue, and those novels are the feminine equivalent of Playboy. I'm sure you can think of other such awakeners. It will be much easier for you to avoid wrong behavior if you first identify, then learn to avoid, the things that tempt you to it.

[emphases all mine, baby]

Wow. This is so me from junior high. Well, not the almost-not-a-virgin bit, because I was quite the never-been-kissed little dork, but the fear of sexuality. Fortunately, I'd gotten over it by age 23. Unfortunately, perhaps, it took marriage at 22 for that to happen.

When Sam & I got married, I was so mad that people no longer cared what we were doing behind closed doors. They'd made such a big deal out of it up to the day we wed (when we weren't doing it), and now that they knew for sure that we were doing it, it didn't matter anymore! What had all the fuss been about, then?

This is all bound up in the freaky-weird traditional Christian perspective of sexuality. After I got over being annoyed with people, I loved being married and no longer feeling any inhibitions or guilt.

When I was in junior high, a friend & I stumbled upon romance novels. They were the perfect insight into our budding sexuality, and I loved to read the most thrilling and naughty passages over again and again. At some point, my friend & I felt terribly convicted and we pledged to destroy all the novels in our possession.

I never touched another romance novel until my roommate in college, a Christian college, happened to be a big romance-novel buff. I started borrowing hers and loved them. This time, not just the naughty bits, though those were nice, but the stories. Oh, the stories! I was swept up in the ... well, the romance of them.

And it was about that time that I started to get a grip on what being someone who's sexual meant, and what it didn't mean. I started just not being so dang uptight anymore, like Miss 23-Year-Old Virgin who touches herself half a dozen times a year and is paralyzed with guilt.

This is one reason why, within my particular culture, I have trouble telling certain people in my life that I read romance novels and in fact am writing one. I know some people will just think they're trashy, and that's their prerogative. I just watched the movie of The Jane Austen Book Club and had read the book too, and there's a great interchange between the sole male member of the group, Grigg, and his no-nonsense dog-breeding amour. He keeps recommending science-fiction novels, and she keeps telling him that they're uncomplicated garbage with no character development, and he finally tells her [paraphrasing], Once you've read any at all, I'll be happy to hear your opions on them. I definitely get the impression from most people who diss romance novels that they've never picked one up.

But the slant of this post relates to the other group I fear to discuss romance novels with, and those are the people who truly think romance novels are wrong. If they could issue fatwas, they would. They're not evil people, they're not mean, they're trying to think through this issue, and they've determined that God doesn't want us reading anything too steamy.

I think it's all bound up in the notion that sex is frightening and dirty and shameful, and I now know enough to refuse to believe that. But how to get that across to people like the advice seeker or the advice giver above?

My hope with my romance novel(s) is to present a worldview that's both moral and sexy, where the good sex is the healthy offshoot of a healthy relationship. I think it's possible, and I think it's worthy.

And, my advice to the woman afraid to touch herself down there? Get over it, honey. Go to town.

A little background

I thought I'd give an idea of my writing journey so far, just so you know where I'm coming from and where I have yet to go.

Three years ago, I guess it was, I took a year off from working to finish my romance novel. I made the mistake of telling people so.

Everywhere I went: Is your novel finished? How's that writing coming along?

And always, always: What's it about? 

After what ended up being nine months instead of a year, I was two-thirds to three-fourths done when circumstances dictated that I start working for actual money again. And how.

And then we had a baby, and everything was topsy-turvier.

But I'm back, baby. I'm determined to finish this sucker, and with the support of my husband, who has agreed to do more than his share of the paid work in our business, I just might manage it. He's admitted he's just looking forward to being a kept man when I get my fabulous advance and multi-book contract. Ha ha!

Now, the reason I hated answering the question "What's it about?" is because, for me, writing is all about an urgency to say something.  If I say it out loud, it takes the energy away, and I no longer have the unmet need to get it down on paper. So I never wanted to talk about my writing as it happened, because I was afraid I then wouldn't do the actual writing. For some reason, people took offense at this and thought it was some petulance of mine that I refused to spill, and they made fun of me and my top-secret plot. Oh, well. I figure if I tell you the truth straight out that you'll take my real reason seriously.

So, that said, I'm unlikely to tell you anything about the novel until it's published, but I'll gladly share my thoughts about writing in general, and, after it's finished, the submission process. (Yipes!)

But, please, please, please, accountability can be great and all, but please no one ask me if it's finished yet! I don't need any more pressure than I give myself. :) But I'll take all the well wishes and writing dust you care to send my way!

Cracked comment against romance novels

Sam enjoys the humor website Cracked.com and often directs me to hilarious posts. Today he found one that would be pertinent to my other blog, but I found one item that pertains to this blog as well:

9 Islamic Fatwas We Can Get Behind

Scroll down and read "#4. THOU SHALT NOT read romance novels." Keep in mind that Cracked is a humor site, so we can go to the source they cite and read the sheik's reasoning:

These stories take people from the real world and place them in a world of fantasy. In doing so, they give people an unrealistic concept of life as well as unrealistic expectations. These stories alienate the mind from practical concerns and impair the ability of people to cope with the real demands of society. Moreover, they are usually full of misguided ways and values. They often promote adultery, gambling, liquor and other types of immoral behavior.

I advise Muslims to avoid reading such stories. At the very least, these stories prevent those who read then from reading useful books or otherwise benefiting from their time.

Well, there you go. According to this sheik, romance novels promote fantasy at the expense of reality, immorality, and sloth.

This quote from Cracked is wonderfully purple writing:

It's not enough to satisfy your gal every single time out with a 15 to 120 minute routine, and an orgasm or two. No, according to her books with shirtless pirates on the cover, one thrust into her eager scabbard from your purple-headed warrior should be sufficient to induce several life-splattering orgasm within three seconds of penetration. Failure to do this means, of course, that you're not "the one" foretold by the romance novel; the one who would entice the feminine secretions from their velvety lair with unfailing intensity and volume.

Thus, millions of women feel like they are "settling." For their happiness and ours, let's end the madness by adopting this general boycott of romance novels, lest men everywhere wither in their fathomless impotence.

I might have to use some of that prose in my novel. :)

But, seriously, as to the point of the sheik's writing -- do romance novels promote unreachably high goals? Well, as a writer, I'm personally against suggesting that women can orgasm multiple times with penetration only, or that couples who are really in love always come at the same time. That's just my personal stance, that it's better to portray erotic and exciting, but mostly realistic, sex scenes.

As to dissatisfaction with the mundane side of marriage -- I don't agree. I think if you're satisfied with your mate that romance novels can only help. I know they put me in a good mood (if you know what I mean, and come on, you know what I mean) and make me happy that I, too, am in such a wonderful and lasting relationship. And, frankly, the other aspects of romance novels, such as pirates as mentioned above, I can do without in real life. I'd much rather read about people facing untold suffering and character building than go through it myself, thank you very much. I don't crave adventure, because I can just read about it!

I think it's grossly unfair to say that romance novels promote immorality. Adultery? Hardly! It's roundly condemned, since it goes against the core of the true-love philosophy. Gambling and liquor? Well, ok, if you're against those things entirely, which I'm going to assume our Muslim writer is, then many romance novels, particularly historicals, do portray such aspects of life. But they never endorse overindulgence. I will admit that premarital sex is very rarely taboo nowadays in romance novels, so there is that aspect of morality that many religions would frown upon.

But, at their heart, I think romance novels are very moral in that they promote healthy relationships over unhealthy. Lasting friendships, forgiveness, faithfulness to a spouse, justice against wrongdoing -- the list goes on. It's the same way that Christians like Dorothy Sayers could write murder mysteries -- the point of a murder mystery is that the murderer is caught, wrongdoing punished. It's the same with romance novels. They are, at heart, comedies, with the traditional U-shaped plot structure (as written about by Northrop Frye): happiness, struggle, ending with happiness and, as is frequent in other comedies because it's so symbolic of harmony, marriage.

I do like how Cracked calls attention to this quote:

It is only advisable for certain academics and concerned people to read such stories so they can be aware of what is out there.

Mm-hm. That's exactly why the sheik needs to read romance novels...um, for research.

Snobs unhappy with happy endings

I'm loving this post on happy endings.

I've often mused on just this subject. Because I love love love happy endings and think that sad endings are, in most cases, pretentious.

My favorite Shakespeare plays are the comedies, because they seem unforced. Tragedy just seems so unlikely.

But maybe that's just my rosy experience of the world.

My mom favors Oprah's Book Club novels. You know, stick your nose in the air and sniff it like you just don't care: Literary novels.

I would make her very happy if I would write a literary novel. And I think I could do it, too. Just give the readers hope — and then take it all away. Nothing simpler.

I think writing a good love story with a believable happy ending is much more challenging. I always appreciate the authors who can pull it off.

Welcome!

I am finishing up my first romance novel, so I wanted to start a blog to detail my journey into submitting it for publishing, as well as other thoughts I have about romance novels, both as an avid reader and as a writer.

Please join me, and enjoy!