{"id":7304,"date":"2016-02-12T00:50:28","date_gmt":"2016-02-12T04:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/?p=7304"},"modified":"2016-02-12T00:50:28","modified_gmt":"2016-02-12T04:50:28","slug":"romance-here-i-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/2016\/02\/12\/romance-here-i-come\/","title":{"rendered":"Romance, Here I Come"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I know I talked about <\/span>Jane the Virgin<\/span><\/i> a couple of weeks ago, but there was an important fact about the show that I forgot to mention.<\/span><\/p>\n

Besides the million other things that I love about the show, one fact that I\u2019ve 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\u2019s in a creative writing cohort in graduate school. <\/span><\/p>\n

But this wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s true. No, it wasn\u2019t the fact that Jane was an inspiring writer. It was the fact that she\u2019s an aspiring <\/span>romance<\/span><\/i> writer.<\/span><\/p>\n

And guess what? No one says anything about it. Nothing. Her advisor doesn\u2019t call her writing silly. Her mom doesn\u2019t wonder why she doesn\u2019t write a different genre. None of her romantic interests has ever questioned that maybe romance writing is not actually writing, that it\u2019s not serious writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nope. Nada. Nein. Jane is, and always will be, an unapologetic romance writer. And that shouldn\u2019t actually be surprising. But it totally is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although I won\u2019t 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\u2019t 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 \u201cnot feeling it\u201d and \u201cthe vibe is wrong,\u201d though this is probably also partially from my poor memory. But one that I do remember? \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m your intended audience.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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? <\/span><\/p>\n

I remember, even though that story was definitely a tough critique, one of my harder ones, that\u2019s what hurt me the most. This person, whatever gender, didn\u2019t take my story seriously enough because automatically it was categorized as romance. And because of it, I couldn\u2019t 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 \u201cintended audience\u201d and whether I was pleasing that audience.<\/span><\/p>\n

I was thinking about this in part because it\u2019s Valentine\u2019s Day this weekend, partially because Jane the Virgin<\/em> was about her romance this week, and partially because I’ve been bingeing a very explicitly romance series.<\/span><\/p>\n

But you know what? Despite the fact that it’s Valentine’s Day and I’m technically alone, instead of being lame, I\u2019m 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\u2019m gonna do? I\u2019m going to watch my romance movies, my romance TV shows, my romance everything. And I\u2019m going to love it and not be ashamed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, and you know what else? I\u2019m going to write romance. Unapologetic, unabashed, fantastic, life-changing romance. And you\u2019re going to like it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019ve always found comforting is that Jane aspires to be a writer. Though […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[245,939,661,606,420],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7304"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7305,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7304\/revisions\/7305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artsatmichigan.umich.edu\/ink\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}