Romance, Here I Come

So I know I talked about Jane the Virgin a couple of weeks ago, but there was an important fact about the show that I forgot to mention.

Besides the million other things that I love about the show, one fact that I’ve always found comforting is that Jane aspires to be a writer. Though she has a degree in teaching, English specifically, her dream is to be a writer. And she actively pursues that dream, oftentimes over her romantic interests – right now, she’s in a creative writing cohort in graduate school.

But this wasn’t all that impressed me about her. To be honest, stories about writers are dime a dozen. For some reason, writers love to write about writers. Call it vanity, but it’s true. No, it wasn’t the fact that Jane was an inspiring writer. It was the fact that she’s an aspiring romance writer.

And guess what? No one says anything about it. Nothing. Her advisor doesn’t call her writing silly. Her mom doesn’t wonder why she doesn’t write a different genre. None of her romantic interests has ever questioned that maybe romance writing is not actually writing, that it’s not serious writing.

Nope. Nada. Nein. Jane is, and always will be, an unapologetic romance writer. And that shouldn’t actually be surprising. But it totally is.

Although I won’t name names, I will say that one time, I got an interesting critique back on a short story. It was, in a way, a romance, but a fabricated one. It wasn’t about love, it was about obsession, and it was meant as a thoughtful questioning of what is the difference between those two. But, in short, yes, it was about a relationship, this one between a man and a woman. But the critique? I remember words like “not feeling it” and “the vibe is wrong,” though this is probably also partially from my poor memory. But one that I do remember? “I don’t think I’m your intended audience.”  

Intended audience or not, does it really matter? Does it matter that my writing was borderline romance? Does it matter if I talked about love? Does it matter if the center of the story was a relationship?

I remember, even though that story was definitely a tough critique, one of my harder ones, that’s what hurt me the most. This person, whatever gender, didn’t take my story seriously enough because automatically it was categorized as romance. And because of it, I couldn’t get a serious critique about it, and it was harder to see what I could change to make the story better without thinking about the “intended audience” and whether I was pleasing that audience.

I was thinking about this in part because it’s Valentine’s Day this weekend, partially because Jane the Virgin was about her romance this week, and partially because I’ve been bingeing a very explicitly romance series.

But you know what? Despite the fact that it’s Valentine’s Day and I’m technically alone, instead of being lame, I’m going to the poetry reading at Literati on Saturday by Amber Tamblyn and then I’m going to do yoga with my best friends. You know what else I’m gonna do? I’m going to watch my romance movies, my romance TV shows, my romance everything. And I’m going to love it and not be ashamed.

Oh, and you know what else? I’m going to write romance. Unapologetic, unabashed, fantastic, life-changing romance. And you’re going to like it.