Put down your books, Women! (unless it v serious & literary)

Another week another controversy.

Yet again we are being told women are far too easily influenced and led by our hormone driven emotions to be trusted to read fiction, especially romantic fiction. It makes us want to be happy you see, makes us want loving equal relationships, possibly even families so we stick with our men, stop using contraceptives and have to have an abortion.

Woman writing for the British Medical Journal say what?!

Yes ladies, close those frothy pink covered books because YOUR reading material leads to unwanted pregnancies, marital breakdown and adulterous affairs. In a Daily Telegraph article published today with the not-at-all-sensationalist headline “Mills and Boon causes Marital Breakdown”
relationship psychologist Susan Quilliam (www.susanquilliam.com - journalist, PR woman, broadcaster wow, multi skilled, she probably doesn’t have time to read – check out her website couldn’t see her research credentials but I am sure they are robust enough to back up such a huge claim) says "a huge number" of problems are caused by romantic novels.

"What we see in our consulting rooms is more likely to be informed by Mills & Boon than by the Family Planning Association,"
"We warn of the stresses of pregnancy and child-rearing, and we discourage relentless baby-making as proof of a relationship's strength. Above all, we teach that sex may be wonderful and relationships loving, but neither are ever perfect and idealising them is the short way to heartbreak. But are our lessons falling on deaf ears when compared to the values of the Regency heroine gazing adoringly across the Assembly Rooms to catch a glimpse of her man.”

Yes, Jane Austen, you may not have written for Mills and Boon but you are clearly also to blame with your breeches clad heroes and romantic declarations. I insist schools stop teaching such froth immediately and replace this woman with some nice Thomas Hardy – Jude the Obscure should do it, no expectations of a happy ending to be found there.
I ranted just last week about how men can, apparently, read all kinds of escapist fiction and yet be trusted not to let it overheat their brains and won’t repeat myself but do find it interesting that it is the right wing press that like to peddle these myths. As a woman what I find hard is not escaping into a novel – of whatever genre – for a couple of hours but the relentless barrage of criticism telling me I am too fat, not fashionable enough, my hair should be glossy, my skin flawless, I must work but not too much or I will ruin my child’s life, must exercise, eat this, wear that, decorate my house this way...

In my opinion the worst and most pernicious influences on women are those drip fed to us by adverts, by magazines, by tabloids, by reality shows, by soaps showing us a world where you have to be pretty and sexy to succeed. Where high heels and glossy hair are more important than a degree, where a cheating lothario of a footballer is a perfect mate. Look at the reality shows and you will see silicon enhanced women making a fortune out of selling every detail of their lives to the papers and magazines, often having babies with multiple partners as part of this real life soap opera. Spoilt heiresses, kiss and tell girls, barely clad pop stars, footballer’s wives (not female footballers, far too sweaty and non blow-dried) – these are the female role models.

Or you could lose yourself in a romance novel where the heroine could be a CEO, a successful baker, run an Art Gallery, a lawyer, a PR consultant, a graphic designer, a computer programmer, a doctor. What kind of ridiculous message is that to teach women? A fulfilling career and an equal partnership with someone who loves you? Clearly fiction. Go get a spray tan and some false nails and hang around a Liverpool nightclub instead. After all, if you get lucky you can always sell your story…

Warning - your reading habits may ruin your life

Another day another attack on women from the UK's bestselling tabloid. We're too fat, too thin, over indulge our children and neglect them as they get over sexualised by the TV we stick them in front of as we binge drink. Working mothers are evil, stay at home mothers lazy and as for single mothers, obviously they are too blame for everything that's wrong in society. Women sports stars/actresses/singers are judged on looks and bodies, men on their talent.

Anna Kournikova - the media were less than interested in her tennis skills

Yesterday they told us not to retire before our husbands because the poor dears can't cope if there isn't a good woman at home to care for them (actually, that one is even more insulting to men, my father does a great job of being retired. He even, shock, cooks and does the shopping although admittedly washing up is beyond him). Today they told us that we are ruining ourselves for real men with our dependence on trashy old romance novels.

Yes, as one poor city trader (a real man, ladies) angrily bit out “These books are responsible for the ruin of my last relationship!” Women today, eh? Apparently we expect men to bring us chocolates and flowers and to discuss feelings and know what we're thinking. As their 24 year old romance reader tearfully confessed she rushed her last boyfriend by expecting a house, dogs and land rover too quickly, thus bringing about the end of the relationship.
Well little Miss Romance Reader, aspirations are good but surely your aspirations are more those of a WAG than a romance heroine? Heroines today often have their own business, house, dog, car taking inspiration from Beyonce than Kanye West's Gold-digger “The watch I'm wearing, I bought it!” The Wag lifestyle may exist in a few bandwagon jumping novels but it's a lifestyle fetishised by reality TV and tabloids – just like the one publishing this article – rather than romance writers and readers. We like our heroines to be independent, sassy and ready to do whatever it takes to succeed in life and love, we don't want a passive kept woman whose Happy Ever After is a middle class, school-run utopia.
I'm not going to discuss the original pop-lite academia-with-an-agenda that prompted this article, look it up yourself and draw your own conclusions but I am going to ask – why women? Why is our every popular taste derided, pulled apart and sneered at? One non-standard romcom movie a year comes out aimed solely at women and its success is always a subject of amazement while Bromances, gross out comedies and action films starring scantily clad lovelies are two a penny and no one worries what they does to men. Men are allowed to read thrillers and SAS books where the beautiful heroine will always fall for the flawed hero, watch Top Gear andbe trusted not to drive their cars like reckless boy racers. Must be that sensible X chromosome.

Except of course this is nonsense, women are more than capable of distinguishing the difference between fantasy and reality, we do it every day. We read fantasy, paranormal, crime, travel, classics and lots of literary fiction. Many of us like to read all the genres, our tastes depending on our mood, and some of us like to stick to the tried and trusted. Just like the rest of our lives,
I will however leave the last word to the tabloid whose article provoked this rant. Women who read romance, apparently, are more likely to stay married than those who don't. I think that's one-love to the romance readers, don't you?

Shiny and new

So, we know what we are writing and who we are writing for. Fantastic. Our hero is clear in our head, all tousled hair, sharp cheekbones, a soupcon of arrogance and tight-fitting breeches (optional), our heroine has the right amount of sassiness mixed with a dash of vulnerability and at least one killer outfit, even if she doesn’t know it yet. And we have a scenario, a “What If” ready to pluck these two characters out of their ordinary world and throw them together so that they can meet, interact and, eventually, fall in love. Brilliant, job done. Goodness, this writing business is a doddle.
Gratuitous shot of hero in breeches:

If you are anything like me then this is the easy part. I love the thinking up of characters and throwing them together in some uncomfortable way. I spend my time day-dreaming up “What ifs”, rewriting TV programmes, books or films - although obviously I have grown out of casting myself in the major role. Who wants to be a vampire slayer or a kick ass spy anyway? Quickly moving on…

What isn’t so easy is working out what happens next.
This isn’t a blog about pantsing versus plotting because there are hundreds of blog posts on that very topic all written by people with a lot more experience than me. Besides, I fall untidily in between. I know exactly how the first three chapters are going to unfold and I know how it’s going to end; it’s just getting there that’s the tricky part. This explains why I have three partials and only one finished novel sitting in my reject files. No, this is a blog about ploughing on through and just writing the darn thing because whether you are a plotter with hundreds of neatly arranged index cards, a collage board and a chapter by chapter synopsis or not, at some point you are going to have to sit down and actually write. Not blog, tweet, or make another cup of tea. Write.

I love writing, that’s why I do it; nothing makes me happier and starting a new novel is a completely giddy experience – the first sentence, paragraph, page, chapter. This giddy feeling stays with me all the way to Chapter 3, and then the doubts set in. Is he consistent, is she behaving naturally or has she turned into Heroine 101, is their conflict real, is there any emotional depth? And the worst question of all – is this the dullest non-story ever written? As I start chapter 4 I am convinced that yes, this is terminally, irretrievably dull. Panic. Meanwhile all the other scenarios and characters start jostling for attention. They will be easier to write, they promise, why not start something new?
In a category romance this is particularly dangerous because, unless you are writing a historical, paranormal or crime based romance then plot wise nothing much does happen, the bulk of the novel is your hero and heroine interacting with each other. No car chases, traitors or grand quests, no amusing secondary characters with problems of their own to deflect attention for a chapter or two. Just two people. For 50,000 words. Jessica Hart once described one of her books as “two people, trapped into marriage going to live in a tumbledown castle. They decorate it and go into a city for a day.” Not the most enticing blurb in the world and certainly not how the reader would describe Newly Weds of Convenience and yet plot wise that pretty much is what happens; but the book is so, so much more. Because it is completely character driven.
Writing character driven books is NOT easy especially for those of us at the beginning of our writing journeys, Like many first time writers my first Standard R (the 3 chapters that exist anyway) is a shining example of how not to write a romance: Too Much Plot, Heroine 101 and Hero 101 pushed together by a series of contrived situations and manipulated by an entire cast of secondary characters. If I tell you that this work of genius included an estranged father, a runaway bride, a lost daughter and a jealous lover you'll get the idea. Goodness knows what I would have poured into Chapter 4, maybe it's a mercy it never got finished.
So in my current WIP I have gone back to basics. No jealous relatives, secret letters or dastardly cousins; just 2 people, a past and an attraction. Of course it may be woefully, endlessly dull, if it ever gets finished in time for the New Writer's Scheme I am sure the reader will soon tell me so. Of course the only way I will ever find out is to ignore those doubting voices and keep writing...

Holding out for a hero

One of the nice things about smallish children is that you can still influence their music tastes to a certain degree. Despite being a Disney popette at heart enough exposure to my C.D.'s means that, although the seven year old may resist The Stone Roses, she's rather partial to Pulp and completely loves the few eighties bands I still listen to. Yesterday we were listening to Aha as we drove through the Yorkshire countryside both singing along lustily while I reminisced about My First Crush. Ah, Morten.

Was it the octave spanning voice? Was it the cheekbones? Was it an utterly winning combination of the two? Whatever the reason his posters adorned my walls, I wore leather bands twisted round my wrists which tightened uncomfortably when they got wet, listened to the music over and over. And I wrote. Maths was confusing, boring, far more fun to spend double lessons writing a never ending saga in the back of my workbook starring myself, clad in a Dynastyesque red sparkly dress, split up to the thigh and Morten, debonaire in a tux, rakish in a leather jacket. Mostly I swept down grand staircases or rode in sports cars, I was a very innocent thirteen year old. But one thing I did know, you have to fall in love with your hero. And as a romance writer you need to make sure your readers love your hero just as much as you do.
And fall in love I did - with Mr Darcy, Captain Wentworth, Gilbert Blythe, a whole array of Heyer heroes from the boyish to the rakes.

The best romantic novels give the reader heroines they want to be friends with coupled with heroes they want to sleep with. Take Jessica Hart's latest book, "Ordinary Girl in a Tiara". Lovely as Kate Middleton may be it's hard to imagine having a giggly glass of wine with such glossy haired perfection but Caro with her bright, vintage clothes, love of food and open, friendly nature would be a great person to spend a girly night with. And Philippe, principled playboy, lost little boy, angry young man doing the right thing, handsome, charming,is a prince we can all lose our hearts too.
Writing our own heroes and heroines is not so easy, Making our heroines real, likeable women, our heroes flawed yet sexy, men we can imagine running away with is harder than seems possible, especially on the third or fourth rewrite when all you want to do is lock them both in a big box and send it to the bottom of the sea. I know my latest hero and heroine, their childhoods, their dreams, aspirations, hopes, favourite food, hobbies, fears, I like her, I fancy him but so far no reader has met them, questioned their motives. They are untouched by the outside world. Exposing them to readers is a step neither I, nor them, are ready to take just yet.

Fits & starts

I know, I know I'm not the only person manically juggling work, family, home, a few desultory attempts to stay somewhere close to a healthy weight and what used to be called volunteering & is now called keeping-essential-services-open-under-guise-of-a-big-society with writing but sometimes it really feels like it. And somehow when I stagger under the weight of all my obligations it is always the writing that loses out. Stephen King, who knows a thing or two about writing, advises us to have a place and a time where we always go to write. Always. Christmas, Thanksgiving (if you're American, we don't really do Thanksgiving in the UK, not sure what the equivalent is?) whatever - go to your place and write. And at the same time every day. Now I am fully aware that Mr King followed his own excellent advice when he was living in a trailer with two small children washing gruesomely stained sheets for a living, wedging himself in a small passageway every evening to type away, I am also aware that a certain very famous romantic novelist locked herself in her bedroom telling her young sons to only disturb her if they were bleeding. I on the other hand am soft and spend my evenings chauffeuring 7 year old around, feeding her, reading to her (Milly Molly Mandy at the present time to the great enjoyment of us both)falling onto the sofa just after 8 capable only of tweeting and drinking copious amounts of gin.
And then I'll get my mojo back. I will write whilst watching Swedish Wallender (not a clue what happened, turns out writing and watching subtitles is impossible even for a multi tasker), I will write in the car outside gym club, I will write while my husband cleans to a standard I have to make myself accept with a false smile on my face. It all feels doable for a while and then... life steps in again - birthdays, cub camping, school assemblies, work events and it all goes pear shaped for a while - until the next spurt that is.
There has to be a better way, suggestions on a post card please! And with the deadline for the New Writer's Scheme scarily close and 35,000 words and an edit to go please make them good (offers of cleaners/chauffeurs/large sums of money will be gratefully received).

Dream lives

One of the loveliest parts of writing is imagining yourself into other people's lives whether plotting imperial intrigue in ancient Rome, investigating supernatural crimes whilst juggling a werewolf secret identity or falling in love with an international playboy who just happens to pop into your Cotswald teashop (delete as applicable). In the last year I have explored regency debutante life both at the heart of the Ton (the standard R) and in scandal dogged exile (my NV entry). I fleetingly tracked down a one night stand (Valentine comp) and spent a lovely month as a successful writer living in a messy cottage hidden amongst the olde world streets of Rye (Nano). In my current hibernating tortoise of a WIP I am reliving the intensity of first love and, just for a bonus, get to wander on sun drenched beaches Cornish beaches looking at the wet suit clad torso of a hero who happens (coincidentally) to look a little like Josh Holloway.

It's a hard life...
All this is, sadly, a long way from the rather drab reality of a small terrace in a Northern city manically juggling work, child, house and, what is it? Oh yes, writing. Or at least putting my netbook on and sighing a lot whilst checking my wordcount obsessively in case the book happens somehow to write itself.
The last two weekends I experienced two very different styles of living, both of which provided a stark contrast to Yorkshire suburbia. Over the Bank Holiday weekend I went to stay with a friend in west London. London was admittedly at its beautiful best. The sun was shining and some wedding or the other had the whole city revelling in a carnival atmosphere (OK I admit it, I was there...). When I lived in London I was North London all the way but found myself beguiled by the (pricey) charm of the West - walking along the Thames path, enjoying beer gardens and gastro pubs, yet just a short tube journey to the heart of the city. I wanted to be in London again so badly it hurt and sulked the whole train journey home - and yes, it was a good five degrees colder in the grim North.
This weekend the daughter had a sleepover at an old friend's house. They hardly see each other any more as her friend has moved out to the Wolds so it was all Very Exciting and required lots of squealing and telephone calls to discuss outfits; they are seven. Dropping daughter off we found ourselves pressed to stay for a cup of tea and ended up there all afternoon, whiling the time away in the sunshine looking out over vales, hills and woods. Trees were newly leafed, birds singing, bees humming (noisily, they were swarming which is a major fear of mine but luckily they were at the other end of the garden) while the children disappeared out into fields to return muddy and exhausted. The family dogs played in the paddock before dropping sleepily at our feet and we ate crumpets, drank tea and chatted. As we drove back to the outskirts of our provincial city I sighed. "I wish we lived in the country."
So which am I? City slicker or country mouse? Like most of us I suspect I am a bit of both. When I imagine my dream life (not that I do that every day or anything) it usually involves a seaside cottage, a red setter and a really fabulous study. Yes, most people's dream houses have amazing kitchens, or gardens, mine has a book-lined study with a bay window and one of those little ladders for getting books off top shelves. Real fires, natch, a cottage garden that looks after itself and clutter that miraculously tidies away without nagging.And for weekends, holidays and to see plays (remember, this is a fantasy) I have a little flat in west London, overlooking the river and right by the tube. Husband and daughter are there of course, it would be a lonely fantasy otherwise, but tidier and definitely no violin practice - even a fantasy life can't make violin practice palatable
The chances of actually living that life are slim *deep sigh* but imagining it is pretty fun, especially if I can take those clear pictures in my mind and convert them into settings for my heroes and heroines to enjoy, before they settle down in suburbia for their HEA of course.

The Standard R

*Warning. I am writing this blog through a mouthful of chocolate. Unfortunately it is still too early to hit the wine.*
The email finally dropped into my inbox just after lunch today, a mere 11 months after submission.
Dear Rosered (it didn't begin)
Thank you for submitting ‘The Scandalous Debutante' for our consideration.
Whilst we appreciate the care and attention that has gone into the preparation of your submission, regrettably we feel that your story and characters are not sufficiently developed for publication in any of our publishing programmes.
Recognise it? I did. It is the exact same letter I got two years ago for my embarrassing first submission. I thought I had improved but turns out I have progressed exactly nowhere. What I found so difficult this time was that this was "the one". Rewrite after rewrite, then taken to last year's York Festival of Writing where I received feedback from a M&B editor good enough to make me float for a week afterwards. She loved the hero! She said I have a voice! I took all her comments and guidance on board and rewrote one last time before submitting it. Directly. Because I got a business card and a request to submit directly. More floating. Then a long, long wait.
Throughout the last year I have managed to use the NV and SYTYCW experiences positively because I had those amazing comments to sustain me. Rejecting my Nano or hastily written NV piece was fine, understandable even, but this one, this one they might take (very secret dream). Or if not I would get the crucial personal "keep trying" rejection (publicly admissible dream). But I got a standard R instead. It wasn't worth feedback.
On the dimly bright side I have worked very hard since I submitted eleven long months ago. The bruising, learning experiences of NV, Nano and SYTYCW. The course. Membership of NWS. A completed (and discarded) novel. Crit partners.
So what next? I have a decision to make. I need to submit something for NWS in three months. Do I
a. Carry on with my RIVA (1st draft started, plotted out) and keep submitting to M&B
b. Carry on with my standard R historical (quarter written) and try marketing it elsewhere.
Obviously there is a c. Both of the above option but not before July. And with time to write so very, very hard-won I just can't waste time on a project with no chance of success.
A writing friend has an inspirational list of successful, bestselling writers who were rejected not just once, or twice or even three times but many times before they made it. They did make it. One day I want to see my name added to that list.