Pep Talk with Francesca Lia Block

Another day, another NaNo mail and this one hits home.

I can't deny I've devoured the romance genre. I also can't deny that there tends to be a lot of all or nothing that I'm just not into. I'm not looking for simpering maids and I'm not looking for the aggressive bulldozers that fuck their way to some pussy-whipped muscle kitten. I still have a copy of the Highland Velvet series by Jude Devereaux, a series that always set the bar with balanced love affairs. I love romance. I even enjoy writing it, but when I read freebies, I truly end up scanning for the juicy bits because most attempts at plot or conversation are hard chalky cheese.

Early on, when I couldn't quite figure out how to sell my fantasy books, I'd even entertained filing into the romance genre. It's one of the few genres where people just don't expect much of women and we're not accused of being women like it's a bad word. I wanted an easy boost, a break from the pain of rejection and hardship. I wanted a supplemental income so I wouldn't be broke while I pursue my passions.

I tried and it was far more painful. It wasn't me at all. I love to incorporate romance but I can't make it the purpose of my story. Even when I would read deeper darker romances like Danielle Steele's Malice, I didn't find my voice in focusing solely on the heroine and hero. Try as I might, there is a real limit to how far I can even hit the Urban Fantasy mark because I really struggle to use real places. I could pass as an Internet traveler but I don't know the world very intimately. Anne Rice set the bar for vampire romance and I don't even care to try to top that. Memnoch the Devil was a pivotal book for me when, after studying religion, I was battling the realization that I was an atheist that just really wanted to believe in something. And somehow it really painted the Christian mythology in a beautiful interpretation that helped me come to terms with it. 

In fact, I've always known that no matter what subgenre I use, fantasy was my playground. I couldn't do the 'quick and dirty' romance and mainly because I thought it was an insult to the genre to even treat it like an easy mark. Maybe someday I can focus on that, but I'm a fantasy nerd and I need those plot complexities with my character developments that just don't do well with readers that want a simpler story. 

It's shaky ground. As I've said before, it's a shame that romance gets a bad rap. It's a place where women learned about their bodies and their feminine strengths when even public schools wouldn't teach us what we needed to know. It's a genre that can have depth and action and plot gymnastics but still gets hit by literary critics because it's also a playground for lonely people who aren't always looking for intelligent epiphanies, just an emotional release. And I say people because there are MEN, even straight men, who find refuge in these concepts but aren't likely to admit it. Too much of a taboo on what the genre is, after all.

The inability to embrace being primarily a romance writer is my failure. It's just not the priority of my voice. I also understand that the fantasy crowd is also highly resistant to my stories too. One whiff of words like romance or sex and I'm like the plague. A female fantasy writer, unless she's claiming a romance subgenre, often needs to use words like war and weapons and violence because any soft language is likely to fuck over her credibility. Yet I'd gladly suffer through the stupid biases than do any discredit to the romance genre by pretending it's easy or lesser than what I want to do. 

Women can certainly succeed alongside men but often, classic women writers also had to write like men. It's very important for modern women writers to resist these temptations of what we perceive of as 'easy' because we ultimately sweep something under the rug when we are afraid of our own voice. We have to risk being pegged in the wrong genre. We have to risk our work going unnoticed. 

Now the Pep Talk was mainly about claiming your own voice, listening to those inner voices telling you something just doesn't fit your work, but as a woman, I felt a little stab at the personal resonance of considering a niche that I perceived as the only way I'd succeed and get to write what I want eventually.

But no. What did my mom's death teach me? We have now. I can't risk destroying my voice, my experience, my passions, just to maybe sell or maybe fail just the same. 

So yes. Listen to your damn voice. If it demands personal integrity, you can weasel around it all you want, but you'll turn your talents into misery. When you shut away your full potential, you let it shrivel and wilt. You might kill all desire to do it, even form a trauma that gives you paralysis when you even think of it.

Don't kid yourself. No matter what defense mechanisms you may build up, there is no bigger discredit than being anyone but yourself. I am actually rather damn proud that my traumas and my adaptations have given me the ability for great insight as a writer. I can give a sort of depth built from experience that some can only generically emulate. Never take such things for granted. While I can't wish things like drug abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, etc on anyone, the takeaway is that those who triumph often have one hell of a story.

So don't piss on that opportunity. Feed. Your. Voice.