Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

In an early Thanksgiving episode from FRIENDS, Monica finds herself besieged by everyone’s request for their favorite kind of potatoes – Joey wants Tater Tots, someone else wants tiny peas mixed in, and so it goes. Except then the gang arrives late, leading to a frazzled, frustrated Monica pointing to each pot in turn and yelling, “The potatoes are burned. . .the potatoes are burned. . .the potatoes are burned!”

As the appointed facilitator for every family holiday dinner since roughly 1980, I can so relate.

As an author, I can relate even more.

According to the latest statistics posted on the Romance Writers of America website, last year nearly 65 million people read at least one romance. My guess is they probably don’t all want the same kind of potatoes. Some of them probably don’t even like potatoes. And, just as, to preserve what little sanity I have left, I’ve long since given up trying to accommodate everyone’s preferences at Thanksgiving, I’ve also realized the futility of trying to accommodate millions of conflicting reader preferences.

Never let it be said, however, that I don’t bust my butt to serve up the best damn meal I can. After nearly thirty years, I do a mean turkey. And sometimes I feel like tossing a little something new into the mix – like cranberry/apricot sweet potatoes, or gingered asparagus. But that mushroom soup/green bean casserole thing? Not on my table. Or mince pie, blech. Of course I offer a variety of side dishes and desserts, and I actually kind of enjoy the challenge of working around the vegetarians or food allergy-prone on the guest list. Nor am I going to throw everybody a curveball and serve salmon instead of turkey as the main course, since everybody expects turkey. But I can only put one kind of stuffing in that turkey. And once I’ve ticked off all the major expectations, like the turkey and the gravy and pumpkin pie, the rest of the menu, frankly, is subject to the cook’s whim.

Because if I don’t love what I’m cookin’, neither will anybody else.

Same goes for my writing. Because this bizarre, often uncontrollable thing called storytelling is hard enough without everybody sitting on my shoulders whispering “Do this!” or “Don’t do that!” or “Or for God’s sake, if I read another [fill in the blank], I’ll barf!.” Hey, there’s barely room up there as it is for all those nasty, stinky little doubt demons scrapping and snarling in my ear. After a while, it gets so a body can’t hear itself think. Let alone create.

Oh, when I started out, I eagerly (if with no small amount of trepidation) read every reader comment I stumbled across, desperate to lock into exactly what readers wanted. So I could, y’know, make them happy. All 65 million of them. Until I finally realized there was no way I could write a historical contemporary realistic paranormal with an Alpha Beta hero and a sexually experienced virgin.

Not that I didn’t briefly consider it.

The thing is, though, when I originally embarked on this journey, my primary goal was to do it my way, or fuggedabout it. My characters, my voice, my stories. If it worked – as in, an editor actually wanted to buy my book – great. If it didn’t, it didn’t. Extraordinarily enough, I hit the right editor with the right story first time out – someone who loves my voice, my characters, my stories. But soon after I sold, I hit a patch where I lost sight of that original impetus, and slipped right into the trap – and I do believe it is a trap, a deep one with lots of scarey pokey things at the bottom, maybe some snakes for good measure – of believing I needed to mold my stories to fit all those reader expectations. I never actually did that, but it took a while to get over feeling I should, if you see what I’m saying. But if I had, I would have gypped not only myself, but my readers. Not to mention the hell I would have caught from my Muse. Who, when pissed, is far scarier than the snakes.

That’s not to say I ignore reader comments that resonate with me – hey, inspiration is inspiration – or take suggestions from my editor, the woman who bought me to begin with because she already loved what I’d brought to the table. And if she suggests, for instance, that my hero could use a little re-tooling, or that holiday themed stories sell, then I’d be an idiot not to re-tool my hero or consider plotting a story around a holiday theme. But the rest is between old Musie and me. After that, I just have to trust that the stories I want to tell will find the right readers. . .and vice versa.

So. Would you rather the cook spend all day fixing several different kinds of potatoes, just to make everybody happy. . .or be left to her own devices to create something fresh and original and memorable? Something that’s maybe not even potatoes at all?

Because the cook who satisfies her own palette first is far more likely to please the people she’s cooking for.

And far less likely to burn the pot.

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