Procrastination Control?

I was going to write a post about procrastination, but I decided to do it later...

But really, this has been the biggest hurdle to overcome when I transitioned from a traditional day job to working at home. it's so tempting to read or watch TV or nap...hell, even cleaning looks more appealing than that blank page.

Let's be honest--you're not "working from home" if you don't get real work done. All (even though saying "most" might have less inherent generalizing, I'll stick with "all") writers who want to be published also want to be taken seriously. I know I want my friends and family to see writing as a career path, not a hobby.

And that means I've got to put in the time. Buckle down, get my butt in the chair, hands on the keyboard (BICHOK) and put in hours similar to a traditional workday. Do I write for six hours a day? No (not yet). But I do spend at least that long writing, reading (craft and fiction), editing, and social networking. For the latter, I put myself on a timer for 30 minutes, and only as a reward for getting the other chunks done. Checking my e-mail can only be done in this "break" time. After trying endless methods for keeping myself from procrastinating, I've finally developed a few key elements that keep me going every morning.

1. Set long-term goals
Write them down and refer to them often. Make them reasonable but not necessarily easy. These are the things you're working toward, like making enough money to go to a conference or buy an iPad 2. My goals (1-, 3-, and 12-month) are in a spreadsheet I look at ever day (along with my daily tasks, below). Sometimes, making yourself publicly accountable is good, too. Have friends know your goals and support you in reaching them. Post on Facebook or twitter or 43 Things but don't just keep them inside your head. Make them come to life on the page.

2. Set daily tasks
I have a spreadsheet (yes, another one) for all the things I need to do in a given day or week. If I get it done, I put an "x" or the details, like the number of words I wrote in a given WIP. If I don't, I put a "0." But here's the important part for me: If I fail on one day, that's fine. I put the info from past days in a pale gray font so I can't really see it, but I can refer to it if I want to see my progress. It's like dieting--"they" say when you write down what you eat, it helps with your accountability, which often leads to weight loss. But if you obsess over those calories, you'll do yourself more harm than good. My daily tasks range from writing to my morning pages (from The Artist's Way) to reading craft books to exercising (see below).

3. Get out of the chair
Yes, this seems counter to BICHOK, but when you ache after a day of work, it's just going to contribute to your workplace anxiety. When doing what you love becomes tainted by backache or joint stiffness or eye fatigue, you're not going to love it as much. Period. Unless you're a masochist, in which case keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming post ;) I know, you have too much to do to take a break but trust me on this--every hour or so, take a five minute break. Stretch, walk a lap around the house, hell, just stand up and touch your toes, but move. You'll be far more efficient the next hour...and the one after that, and after that...

4. Keep up to date in your field
See what other writers are writing, bloggers are saying, graphic designers, creating. Not only will you see what's already been done, you'll learn from others in your arena, and not just the professionals. This is not about checking out the competition. It's about being a voracious learner. It's about reminding yourself why you chose a tough-ass path as a freelance worker. Pick up the books written by experts on how to do...anything in your field. And that author who puts out X books a year? You know her, the one you'd kill to be? Read her books, her blog, her grocery list...find the passion and dedication in her words.

5. Remind yourself why you love what you do
If you're a visual person, slap up pictures of the things or people that inspire you. I'm a wordie, so I have signs hanging in my office that say "believe in love"and "all because two people fell in love" and "Once in awhile, in an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale." Put your favorite book on your shelf as a reminder. Mine sit next to my NaNoWriMo WINNER certificate. This also relates to what Julia Cameron (yes, The Artist's Way Again) calls "refilling the well." Creating is hard work. It's draining, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise because even if you love writing beyond belief you're putting something of yourself onto the page (although I hope you're not bleeding onto the keyboard, literally or figuratively). You've got to spark your creativity every now and then. Be re-inspired. Movies, museums, nature walks, whatever floats your boat and ices your cake. And yes, you can call it work.

Tag, you're it!: What is your task mistress? Does she carry a bullwhip or nudge you with a twitchy little bunny nose? What strategies worked--and failed--for you?

Guest Bloggers Anah Crow and Dianne Fox - The Shape of the Story

There’s a saying on the Write To Work blog we’re sharing and Anah put it there to remind herself and any other writers who drop by: Is namhaid an cheird gan í a fhoghlaim. It reads, “The craft is an enemy when not learned.” As we’re working on our craft, we’ve been taking a look at plot structure. It’s kind of fun to play with.

Structure is not usually visible. If it’s done well, it’s felt more than seen. We recognize it subconsciously because it’s at the core of every story we’ve been told since we were kids. We expect it. There are two common structures that are the foundation of most stories we know: the line and the circle. Sometimes they can even exist in the same story—a linear story in terms of fortune and geography, a circular story in terms of the heart.

Put simply, the line is a trip to a new place. You leave the apartment on the last day of your lease, hand over the keys, walk out into the bright and hopeful day to find that your car won’t start. The door behind you is closed, you can’t go back. Your phone is packed in a box somewhere, you lose your wallet, miss the bus, anger a bank manager, befriend a homeless man, meet his wealthy brother, and hop into his private limo for a ride to your new apartment

A circle returns you to the place from which you started. Perhaps looked at from the side it’s more of a spiral, because on one plane you progressed but, on the face, you return to your starting place. In most books, that place is a positive one. You leave home for university, crossing the threshold of admission. You struggle with finances and romances, overcome one challenge after another until you find true love. You cross the threshold of marriage and find yourself home once again.

We thought the best way to play with these structures was to match them up to the movies that we’ve known and loved. In hopes of including as many people as possible, we picked some classics: PRETTY WOMAN, DIRTY DANCING, ROMANCING THE STONE, and AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN.

Pretty Woman is a linear story for the heroine, an uphill climb in which she finds love, leaves sex work, and attains a new social status. She faces a variety of challenges, including the dismissive salesgirls at the dress shop, the polo event, and the aggressive come-on and insults from the hero’s lawyer. In the end, as she prepares to rescue herself from a life she no longer wants by leaving to earn a GED, the hero arrives to help her complete her journey, bringing her back with him into his world.

Dirty Dancing is circular, a trip into the ‘other world’ of summer holidays from which the heroine returns to the same life she left as a different, wiser person. She faces obstacles in her path—the performance at another resort, going to her father for help in an emergency—and the process of overcoming those obstacles and her experiences with the dancers and resort staff change her. At the end she re-enters her parents’ world and, in conquering her final challenge, brings the resort staff with her, effectively bringing the two worlds together even as she returns home.

Romancing the Stone is linear for the hero, he gives up his former life of adventure to be by the side of his new love—the movie ends with his boat being trailered through the streets of New York City as he comes to a new home. For the heroine, the plot is cyclical, as she begins the movie submitting a manuscript and returns home to do the same.

An Officer and a Gentleman is circular for the hero because he crosses a threshold into a time of testing and emerges on the other side in almost the same place he left, only as a better person. For the heroine, the story is linear, an escape from the grind of the working class life. She also breaks the cycle that has trapped many women in her area, including her mother, finding herself a real love instead of being briefly seduced by a man on his way to better things.

Some readers may prefer one form of story over another, same with writers. Anah loves to write plots that are linear in terms of character fortunes and development but does find a certain satisfaction in bringing stories full circle. However, she prefers to read linear plots. Dianne prefers to write linear plots, but likes looking at them in terms of the cyclical story in order to dig up more details and new ways of looking at the same events. Like Anah, though, she prefers to read stories in which the primary plot is linear.

Is there a plot structure that you prefer? Are you an eclectic who goes for spirals or frames or other esoteric shapes? Are your favorite stories laid out with cyclical plots or linear ones?

Anah Crow and Dianne Fox have been writing together for years, in a variety of genres. You can find them at www.anahcrow.com, www.foxwrites.com, as well as anahcrow.livejournal.com and diannefox.livejournal.com. You can also find them on Twitter as @anahcrow and @diannefox, or sign up for their newsletter at http://www.foxwrites.com/newsletter.

Growing as a writer

Today’s the last day of the contest Erin Nicholas and I are having to celebrate the release of our print books earlier this month – Just Right and Love 2 Love U. Head on over to The Romance Studio to find out more!

Love 2 Love U has been out for a few weeks now but I never really did blog about it here. It’s a print anthology of my three novellas, Love Me, Love Me More and 2 Hot 2 Handle. All three stories got good reviews, especially 2 Hot 2 Handle, which also was the #1 seller at the Samhain bookstore for quite a while after release. That story really felt like a turning point in my writing where it was getting stronger and better, although I think my writing has grown a lot more even since then.

Pushing myself as a writer to try different things helps me to keep learning and growing and improving. 2 Hot 2 Handle was my first ever M/M/F story so I did struggle a bit writing it. Sometimes stories just flow out of me and sometimes I have to really work to get them out. Other stories that have been a struggle for me were Rigger, because it was my first BDSM story, and Power Struggle, because of Dev. In Rigger I had to get inside Shayla’s head and really understand how she would feel in that situation which, being completely honest here, I have never been in. It was even more difficult to get inside Dev’s head in Power Struggle – a guy who deep down inside wants to dominate a woman, but secretly feels it is wrong and bordering on abuse. That’s a powerful internal conflict, especially when he’s confronted by a strong woman who knows what she wants him to do to her.

But I think the struggles we have with our writing are what help  us learn and grow and improve.

I’ve been pushing myself to learn and grow more as a writer lately. I’ve done workshops and I’ve read and re-read some craft books. I’ve worked harder at planning my stories out - I've even started using an Excel spreadsheet for my plotting and it worked great! I’ve tried wrting about some different things – a Beta hero (who knows if I was successful, we’ll see!); another BDSM story with the most mature hero I’ve written yet (Gabe is 40), a strong, masterful dominant who walks away from the life; and I’m trying to write a historical romance set in a unique time and place – now this one’s definitely a struggle! Though I’m kind of looking forward to the first scene where the hero has to get the heroine out of her clothes…it’s going to be quite a feat!


Other writers – how do you keep developing yourself as a writer? Or do you even think about that?

Why my heroines are always beautiful

I’ve read a lot of books and blogs and articles about creating characters. I’ve read that readers don’t want to read about heroines who are perfect – they should have flaws and be someone readers can relate to. Much of the advice centers around the personality of the heroine – making her three dimensional and likeable enough that the reader wants to spend time in her head. As for physical characteristics, I've heard that readers don't want to read about someone who’s too perfect to be true.

I always put a lot of thought into my characters’ physical appearance as well. Often I try to find photographs of a model or even actor who I think looks like my character. I won’t necessarily describe the heroine in great detail, but will give enough information so the reader can form a picture in her own mind.

I recently realized that all of my heroines are physically attractive. Why? I don’t actually know, except that for me romance is a “fantasy” and in my own fantasies, starring me, I’m slender and fit and beautiful. Hey, it’s a fantasy, I can be whatever I want. And I guess when I get inside a character’s head as a reader, I want to be beautiful.

For the most part, I think my heroines are somewhat oblivious to their looks. I’ve never written a heroine who thinks she’s gorgeous. On the other hand, I’ve never written a heroine who is convinced she’s ugly. Or fat. I’ve never written a plus-size heroine who worries about her weight; but I’ve also never written a heroine who’s slender who thinks she’s overweight or a heroine who worries about the size of her thighs as the hero is stripping her naked. That’s not sexy to me. I find it sexy when a woman is confident and secure – not conceited, but not overly concerned with how she looks. I do think I will write a heroine who worries about her thighs at some point. That’s just reality. But maybe because I’m kind of like that – my thighs are fat, my stomach isn’t flat, my boobs are too small – a sexy fantasy for me is to be a woman who’s unconcerned with those things.

But I think the real reason my heroines are beautiful is because they are most often described through the hero’s eyes. I try not to use that “heroine looking in a mirror” cliché and have her describe her own looks, but for the most part my heroines don’t think a lot about their looks. But some of them do see themselves differently than the hero sees them.

Here’s an example from Taming Tara, my latest Ellora’s Cave release. This is Tara, comparing herself to her sister Sasha:

She introduced Joe to Sasha, who looked him up and down with unabashed appraisal. Tara couldn’t help but compare her faded jeans and cotton tank top to Sasha’s silk dress and sexy sandals. Sasha was just totally different, her hair highlighted to a much paler blonde, flat-ironed to perfect straightness, her lips shiny bright pink.

Tara had always felt dull and boring beside Sasha, but it didn’t usually bother her. Tonight, however, she wished she compared more favorably to her younger sister seen through Joe’s eyes. Damn him. Why did she even care what he thought?

And here’s Joe looking at Tara and Sasha in another scene:

Her sister stood by her side in a sparkly red dress, her hair pale blonde, her skin tanned, the nails on the hand clutching her martini glass long and manicured. Her full lips, so much like Tara’s, were red and shiny and she wore a lot more make-up than Tara did. They did look alike, but Sasha’s vivid sexiness did nothing for him. It was Tara’s understated beauty that drew his eyes back.

And another example from my soon-to-be-published (stay tuned for details!) Breakaway - this is Jason meeting Remi for the first time:

Jason looked down at the tiny little blonde standing there with her hand on his arm. Was she even old enough to be in the bar? Amusement tickled inside him. He was used to girls hitting on him, went with the territory, but this little pipsqueak teeny-bopper blonde was hands-off material. Not even close to his type, anyway.

Later the same evening, after Remi discovers Jason just broke up with dark-haired super model Brianne Haskett, this is her point of view:

“What I mean is, I’m not normally attracted to cute little blondes.”

Cute little blonde? Yeah, that was her. How she wished she had mile-long legs and big boobs and full lips like Brianne Haskett. Stephanie Seymour. Laetitia Casta. All those other Victoria’s Secret models who looked like that.

No, she was teeny weeny, skinny, flat-chested, with wispy blonde hair.

But Jace seemed to find her attractive.

And still later that night, the attraction between them has developed even further, and this is what Jason thinks of her now:

And the top and the skirt came off too, both down over her hips and legs, leaving her lying on the couch in her lingerie and yes, her panties were black lace, too, a tiny triangle held on by a slender black ribbon over each hip. Her skin was incredible—creamy smooth everywhere, her body dainty and perfect.

He had to just stop and stare, breathing hard.

“Jace?” She put a hand out to him and he lifted his gaze to her face. Uncertainty shadowed her eyes, her mouth soft and pouty.

“You’re so fucking gorgeous,” he muttered. “I have to look at you.”

Her eyes widened, then drifted closed and the corners of her mouth tipped up. “Thank you. I’m not…”

He lightly rested his fingers on her mouth. “Don’t even say it.” He didn’t know how, but he knew what she was about to say, and he didn’t want to hear any comparisons between her and anyone else, because there was no comparison. Jace himself was a little taken aback at how stunningly beautiful he found her.


What I like (and what I often write) is a heroine who is not overly concerned about her looks but perhaps a little insecure, and a hero who thinks she is absolutely, breath-takingly gorgeous. He’s attracted to her, if not immediately, as with Jason the first time he sees Remi above, but certainly as he gets to know her. He can’t keep his eyes or his hands off her, she’s so beautiful and sexy.

So what do you like in terms of heroines and their looks? Big and confident? Gorgeous but insecure?

To Count or Not to Count

For someone who hates math, I do a lot of counting these days. At least I’m counting something I love.

Words.

Yep, I’m one of those writers who lives and dies by word count goals. When I’m working on a first draft, I write 3,000 words a day, by hook or by crook. It doesn’t matter when, it doesn’t matter how. It doesn’t even matter how good the words are. But I won’t go to sleep until I make my word count.

But sometimes I wonder…is this really the best method? Does it value quantity over quality? Would I be better off not worrying about how many words I write in a day, and instead make them fantastic, stellar words? Edit as I write, in other words. Some people work that way, very successfully.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips, for instance. She’s one of my idols, and her method is to make each sentence perfect before she moves to the next. By the time she’s done with a book, it’s already edited. I’m eaten up by jealousy over this, I admit. Wouldn’t it be lovely to craft a book perfectly the first time around?

When I finish my first draft, I know it’s just step one. Next come multiple revisions and polishes, and that’s before an editor ever sees it. My process is messy. My motto--get the words out, fix it later.
For me, that’s where the real magic happens, when I get in there and make all those “vomit draft” words work.

Not to compare myself with another iconic romance writer, but I write more like Jayne Ann Krentz (at least in terms of process!) She says her first draft is a matter of figuring out what the book is really about. Then she writes several more drafts before she’s satisfied. Which goes to show you that everyone’s different and should find what works for them.

But what if my word count goals are actually holding me back? What if I could write 7,000 words a day, and I don’t even know it? What if my need for structure is hampering my inspiration? What is the point of generating words if they’re no good and you have to rewrite them later?

I don’t have any tried or true answers. All I know is that to make forward progress on a book, I need those numbers. I need math! I need 1,000 words, then a break for more tea. 500 more, and I can check my email. After 2,000, I can consider a snack. 2,500, hello, Twitter. At that point, I’m only 500 from a good day’s work. I need my words to pile up like clay on a pottery wheel. I’ll shape them up later. Maybe that sounds mundane and unglamorous, but that’s what works for me.

So what about other writers out there? How do you feel about word count goals? Thumbs up or down?

Why Do Women Read Romance

A few weeks ago Meg Benjamin wrote a great blog article here “If women like it, it must be stupid”. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately.

It started with the Jennifer Weiner/Jodi Picoult/Jonathen Franzen story and the fact that “The New York Times really does review more fiction by men than by women. Far more. Over about two years, from June 29, 2008 to August 27, 2010, the Times reviewed 545 works of fiction—338, or 62 percent, were by men. During that period, 101 books got the “one-two punch” of a review in both the daily Times and the Sunday Book Review—72 of them were by men.”

They do point out that this doesn’t take into account how much of all published fiction is written by women versus men, but as we all know, romance is the biggest selling genre and I’m pretty sure women publish more fiction than men. Not only that, when women writers do get reviewed by the NYT, it’s never romance (someone mentioned Nora got reviewed there once).

Picoult and Weiner made several points not just about reviews by the NYT but that in general fiction written by women does not get the same respect as fiction written by men. It also interested me that the article noted “Nick Hornby, Jonathan Tropper, Carl Hiaasen, David Nicholls...all of these guys write what I'd call commercial books, even beach books, books about relationships and romance and families. All of them would be considered chick lit writers if they were girls.”

Then I read another blog article by Katherine Buetner which referenced Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance, a sociological study of romance readers published in 1984. She conducted interviews in a midwestern town with forty-two romance readers, asking them about their reading motives, habits, and rewards. Radway found that the women she studied devoted themselves to nurturing their families, but received insufficient devotion or nurturance in return. In romances the women found not only escape (remember that word) from the difficult and boring routines of their lives but also a hero who supplied “the tenderness and admiring attention that they have learned not to expect. Specifically, she suggests that romance novels teach their readers to create fantasies that will render their unsatisfying marital relationships more satisfying by applying the rules of the hero’s “transformation” to their husbands: he rarely shows me tenderness, but because he does show it occasionally, he must secretly feel it all the time; those moments are the only moments when he allows himself to show it, but knowing that tenderness exists should be enough.”

Holy crap. Okay, that was 1984 but still, it seems to be saying that romance teaches women to create fantasies to escape from real life – from real, unsatisfying life.

First of all – WTF? Is that a fantasy? Do we expect men to show tenderness and affection all the time? Jeebus. I know my husband loves me, pretty sure he loves me a lot – but hell yeah, he doesn’t show his tenderness and affection all that often. Though I do get a kiss goodbye every morning, without fail. I’d say that’s more like teaching reality, rather than teaching a fantasy.

Second, not all readers of romance are married. And the ones who are, aren’t necessarily unsatisfied in their marital relationship. And...well I could go on and on about the flaws in this research but that’s already been covered elsewhere.

And third - what's wrong with escaping from real life for a while?

What I don’t understand is all this fascination with the reasons women have for reading romance. I Googled “why women read romance” and found pages and pages of hits. Then I Googled “why men read science fiction” and found – nothing. I searched “why men read westerns”, and “why men read adventure” and again – nothing. I Googled simply “why men read” – nothing. Perhaps they don’t. If they do, nobody cares to analyze why or what they’re reading. Ha! Then I Googled “why men read fiction” and the second thing that came up was a blog article by Jason Pinter called “Why Men Don’t Read”. It seemed to prove my point, however when I read the article, he’s discussing a publishing bias against men and the difficulty publishing books that men would read, which leads to a dearth of books that would interest men. Hmm. Interesting. Considering most of the books the NYT reviews are written by men.

In fairness I also Googled “why women read mysteries” – again, nothing.

So...the preoccupation with why women read romance seems to be based on the assumption that romance is unworthy and romance readers (primarily women) are intellectually inferior. In the 18th and 19th Centuries, there was a cultural belief that women were intellectually inferior to men and men believed women would be harmed by reading fiction. And here we are in the 21st Century and it seems that things haven’t changed all that much.

Why do women read romance?

There are two main reasons I read anything: to be entertained, or to learn something. In many cases, reading serves both purposes.

I noted the word “escape” above because romance novels are often called “escapist”, with the idea that the reader needs to escape her world by retreating into the world of the novel. Yet literary fiction isn’t described this way, which implies that readers are getting something more out of it than just “an escape.”

But what’s wrong with escaping your real life for a while to immerse yourself in a different world? That’s entertainment. It’s watching a movie or television show or listening to a concert. But the term is pejorative. It implies there is no learning.

I believe there can be much more than just escaping when women read romance. As I say on my blog, “I believe in the power of romance stories to portray strong, loving, romantic, sexual relationships that succeed, and to celebrate strength, courage, honour, and love. I believe love, romance and sex teach us about ourselves, about each other and about relationships, and break down barriers and boundaries.” So I believe that reading romance does serve the purposes of both entertaining and educating.

Furthermore, why does romance get knocked as a form of escapist entertainment? And this applies not just to books, but to movies – ever hear the term chick flick? Readers of mysteries, crime thrillers, watchers of those types of movies don’t earn the same derision as those who read romance or watch chick flicks. Could it be because they’re primarily...women?

I am deeply interested in the study of romance as literature — but I am NOT interested in the question of why women read romance. I don’t even want to hear that question any more. Nobody is asking “What do readers get out of reading Steven King?” or “Who are the people who read Nicholas Sparks and why do they read his books?” so why do they ask it about the books that women write (and read)? We need to explore romance as a fiction genre without cultural stereotypes and biases about who reads it and why.

If Women Like It, It Must Be Stupid

Okay, now that the Zillionaire Vampire is well and truly launched, we’re back to the usual blog posts, or, in my case, blog rants.

A few weeks ago, Entertainment Weekly ran a cover story on Eat, Pray, Love the movie, and they had a sidebar interview with the book’s author, Elizabeth Gilbert. In the course of the interview, Gilbert addressed the backlash against her book and its sequel, Committed, as being somewhat gender based. The attitude, she said, seemed to be “If women like it, it must be stupid.”

I have to admit, I haven’t read Eat, Pray, Love (hey, I’ve got a lot of Nora Roberts still to get through), but that statement really struck home with me because it’s so true of the general attitude toward romance. The overwhelming majority of romance readers and writers are women, and the overwhelming majority of romance critics seem to be men. The prevailing attitude always comes down to “You read that stuff? How can you stand it? It’s, well, stupid!”

So here we are, writing in the most popular genre of popular fiction, drawing millions of readers, maybe even inspiring people who hadn’t ever read anything for fun before to pick up a book, and somehow it’s a big embarrassment. If women like it, it must be stupid.

Male critics, and some female critics who want to show they’ve grown a pair, go after romance with open derision. An author on the RWA-PAN recounted a conversation she’d had with an independent bookstore owner who, when asked if she carried romance, replied, “No I only carry good fiction.” It’s lame, it’s dumb, it’s totally…female. If women like it, it must be stupid.

I keep pointing out that this attitude is both subjective and unfair. I tell people flatly that the best romance writers are as good as or better than the best mystery and thriller and sci fi writers. It doesn’t seem to matter. My local newspaper, the Denver Post, devotes one page of book reviews every month to new mysteries and thrillers, but they’ve never reviewed a romance so far as I know (and yes, I do check—compulsively). The editors in charge of the books page and the entertainment section are both men—my guess is they share the opinion of the independent bookseller. If women like it, it must be stupid.

The Romance Writers of America have a long-standing program that tries to raise the profile and increase the respectability of the genre, including grants for academic study. The Popular Culture Association has a romance stem in which scholars can share the results of their research. But when I used to go to PCA conventions myself, the romance sessions got a lot more snickers than, say, the sci fi and horror sessions. If women like it, it must be stupid.

Maybe RWA could fund an initiative to get men to try reading romance. We could even give them plain brown book covers to use if they found it too embarrassing to be seen with a romance novel in their hands. Maybe we could get them to admit the possibility that love and sex are at least as interesting as the aliens of Galaxy 23 or the latest in high tech warfare. If women like it, it must be stupid.

I wish I had an uplifting finish here. I mean, I’m a romance writer—I believe in HEA. But I don’t see it happening. We’re stuck with the perceptions that have been foisted on us from the outside, and they seem to be pervasive. Maybe the best we can do is to keep pounding away at this cliché by personal example. Yeah, I’m a woman. Yeah, I read and write romance. And I’ll match my IQ to yours any day of the week, boyo. If women like it, it must be stupid? Fuck that!