Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

In a couple of months I’m going to be attending WisCon (World’s Leading Feminist Science Fiction Conference) and one of the panels I’m going to be on is Girl Book or Boy Book? I thought this was a great topic and one all of you could help me with. (Yep, I’m expecting you to make me look genius.)

So, what do you think? Are there girl books and boy books? And by this I don’t mean The Hardy Boys vs. Nancy Drew. I’m talking about say Lois McMaster Bujold, Isaac Asimov, Laurell K. Hamilton, Kim Harrison, Jennifer Crusie, John Sandford, Janet Evanovich, etc.

Now I mention all of the above because I personally know both men and women who read all of these authors. And let’s just get this straight right now–I sincerely doubt there is any book or genre that doesn’t have at least SOME cross-over. If you think there is, I’d love to hear it.

But that said, I have to admit to *thinking* of some books as being girl books–romance and chick lit landing on the top of that pile. They just tend to be targeted to women–our experiences and what we like. But maybe it’s just packaging? Do you think if the marketing was done right, the majority of male readers could/would enjoy romances as much as women?

How about books like Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld series…duh it says “women” in the series title. But…there I go again…there’s action, there’s great world-building, there’s no reason to call them girl books. Is there?

Now, having completely outed myself as thinking of books as “girl” books–let me address the flip side. Boy books. I’m sure there are some….uh…can’t think of any. Sure there are some that have a higher action level, more gore, all that good stuff you associate with a Y chromosome, but for some reason I never think of them as “boy” books.

Maybe there’s a reason for this. What did you read growing up? I’m sure this is changing, but when I was little if you had a taste for action in your literature, you had to delve into boydom. There weren’t great female fantasy authors like there are today, and girl books (while I loved many of them) did not usually star a kickass heroine. She might have been strong (emotionally) but she wasn’t picking up the bad guy and tossing him over her shoulder. So, in addition to Anne of Green Gables, I sought out Alexandre Dumas, Robert Lewis Stephenson, Zane Grey, and Isaac Asimov.

And then there are the societal pressures. Let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to be accepted in the USA if you’re a boyish girl than if you’re a girly boy. How many fathers do you think would still cringe if their sons trotted out of the library with Anne of Green Gables tucked under their arms? Sad, but true.

So, with all that said, my guess is that I’ve been thinking about this wrong all of my life –that there aren’t REALLY boy books and girl books, just our perceptions. And, most of all, that I’m damn lucky to have been born a girl so something like a pink cover doesn’t get in the way of finding a great new book and author.

I like numbers. Statistics. Fast facts. Weird bits of information to amuse my friends with.

But one single stat has stuck in my mind for years, one particular number – 3,000.

That’s the average number of books a person can read in her lifetime, according to some article I read years and years ago.

How utterly depressing.

3,000 books? That’s all I’m going to get around to in (hopefully) 70-some years on this earth? That’s all I can ever read?

It makes me want to cry.

Because I could go into any Barnes & Noble right now and pick out at least 100 books I’d like to read. Probably more, depending on the size of the store. Libraries, used book stores, yard sales. All have even more terrific books just waiting to be discovered.

But reality says that I’m not going to get around to all those cool Kim Harrisons. The gritty Richard Starks. The funny Terry Pratchetts. The action-packed Lee Childs. And all the other great authors I’ve yet to discover.

Yep, I’m definitely depressed now. Pass me the chocolate.

I stumbled across the 3,000 stat way, way back in high school. As a result, I decided to start keeping track of all the books I read – just to see if I could come close to or even beat the 3,000 benchmark.

Flash forward to 2007. My tiny little list has swelled to just over 800 books read. Those first few book titles, scratched out on notebook paper, have been typed into my computer database, complete with author’s name, my rating, year published, and year read. Among my recent reads are Dark Lover by J.R. Ward and Demon Angel by Meljean Brook. (Good books, by the way).

Of course, my 800 number is probably much higher, considering all the Sweet Valley High and Nancy Drew and Babysitters Club and Ramona Quimby books I read when I was a kid. Let’s say I’ve really read 1,000 books, and that I’ve lived about a third of my life.

You do the math. Okay, let me. I’m right on track to make 3,000 – but not beat it.

Recently, I tried (in vain) to find that first article or even another one that mentions the magic 3,000 number. Another story put the number much, much lower – at 1,950 hardcover books. Other articles and sites on the Web estimate that most people only read one book a year and probably won’t even crack 100 in their lifetime.

One book a year?!? I feel faint. Pass me some more chocolate. Followed by a gallon of ice cream.

I can’t imagine only reading one book a year. Can’t comprehend it. Can’t wrap my mind around that fact. Because books are treasures. Adventure and romance and laughter and tears all wrapped up and bound together in a nice, tidy package.

So, enjoy every single book you read, even the ones that aren’t necessarily your favorites. Find something to take away from them

Because whether you read 300 in your lifetime or 3,000, they all count – and they all feed your soul in some small way.

What about you? Do you keep track of all the books you read? Think you’ll hit the 3,000 mark? Blow right by it? Inquiring minds want to know …

As a librarian nothing makes me happier than seeing people reading. Reading anything. Cereal boxes, supermarket tabloids, People magazine, instructions on how to assemble that toy Santa brought the kids for Christmas morning – anything. I’m also a very big supporter of popular fiction. Books that are fun to read. I firmly believe the reason more people don’t read is because they don’t realize that it should be fun. Reading shouldn’t be a chore, so find out what you like and stick with it.

It’s this love of popular fiction that has led me for the last couple of years to give reader’s advisory talks on the romance genre. Think of it as Romance Novels For Dummies. Tell people who don’t read romance why I love it so much in the hopes that maybe they’ll think about giving one a try. These experiences have led me to come to one startling conclusion:

It’s amazing more romance authors aren’t writing books from prison.

When I give one of these talks I would say about 99% of the audience is receptive, appreciative, and really feels like they’ve learned something. It’s that other 1% that throws the wrench in the works. Unfortunately that 1% also doesn’t know how to keep their mouths shut.

After one particular presentation I had a woman come up to me afterwards and heartily disagree with me about the term “bodice ripper.” I had carefully laid out why most writers and readers find the term insulting, and how most books that were labeled “bodice rippers” twenty years ago are extremely different from what is being published in the romance genre today. This woman proceeded to tell me that bodice rippers still made up the bulk of the genre because the books have “sex” in them. That’s right – any book with sex in it is a “bodice ripper.” Who knew? Wonder if anyone has told Oprah that she inadvertently selected some “bodice rippers” for her book club?

My most recent comment came from a woman who told me afterwards that I was wrong when I said romance novels weren’t “cookie cutter.” See, she’s never read a Harlequin, and never will, but she thought it would be fun to write one.

I’ll give you a minute to digest that absurd statement.

Anyway, she looked up the “writing guidelines” provided by Harlequin and that’s how she knows they’re all “cookie cutter” and “poorly written.” Besides the fact that Harlequin does not have a monopoly on the genre (there are a few more publishers out there), I’m sure it’s gratifying for all the Harlequin authors to find out that they’re not working hard on their writing. No need for pesky details like character or plot development – just fill in the blanks on the standard template while your kids take their afternoon nap.

I’m sad to report that I didn’t have pithy comments for either of these misguided souls. My initial reaction was to strangle them, but alas, I was representing the organization that I work for. The same organization that makes it possible for me to pay the rent, stay fed, and buy books – so I bit my tongue. Hard. I’ve got a bloody stump left.

But it did get me thinking – do I respect romance authors enough? I certainly have a great amount of respect for any writer. Writing is hard work. It takes patience, talent, and a strong work ethic. If I ever had a person come up to me and say, “When are you going to write a real book?” or “Isn’t writing a Harlequin just fill in the blank?” I’d be the latest crazy person featured on the 6 o’clock news. So how do authors maintain their sanity and sense of humor? Tequila? Vodka? Moonshine?

All of this brings back how desperate many readers and writers are for respect. We want non-romance readers to grant us a modicum of consideration. To engage their brain before they open their big mouth. That’s never going to happen, and the sooner we realize it, the happier we’ll be. I could have been angry with those women, and for a short time I was. Then I realized it wasn’t anger I felt, but something else – pity. They can’t help the stupid things they say, because they’re trapped in their narrow little world with only their narrow little minds to keep them company.

Yep, pity is the only way to go.

Write something fresh and different. Find a new angle on an old idea. Avoid the stock character types and overdone plot twists, and write something that shines. Great advice, all of it, but if you’re a frustrated writer, banging your head against a wall of editors and agents in an attempt to get someone’s attention — anyone’s attention! — it can be easier said than done. We all know that, if you want to get published, it’s important to write a story that’s uniquely yours while still appealing to your potential audience, but how exactly is a writer supposed to do that? Where do all of these innovative ideas come from?

Good question.

It strikes me that another bit of advice we hand out can do just as much harm as good when it comes to helping writers dream up their most original work: Read. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t read — far from it. If a writer doesn’t read, they have no business trying to write. But it’s a common practice to tell new writers to read all they can in their genre of choice, so that they can really get to know the market and find out what is working for other writers. And it makes sense, to a point. After all, it’s hard to know if your idea is fresh if you haven’t checked out the stories already on the bookstore shelves. But it’s possible to get too familiar with the successful works in a given genre, so familiar that the tone and rhythms of your favorite writers begin to flavor your own work, as well. It’s difficult to be original when your brain is filled to overflowing with the wonderful plots and characters of the current best-sellers. It’s human nature to dream up more of what we love and enjoy.

How do you get around this rather paradoxical dilemma? It seems simplistic, but read other things. Go right ahead and continue to read your genre of choice, but try mixing it up, particularly when you’re in the process of brainstorming your next story idea. Do you write paranormal romance? Go ahead and read a few, but if you’re writing about witches, stick to vampire books for a while, and then branch out into some romantic suspense and maybe a good western. Take a detour down the mystery or science fiction aisle and see what you stumble upon. And by all means, stroll over to nonfiction and see what sort of research might inspire you; brush up on the history of the Salem witch trials, check out a book on Tarot readings, and maybe find a couple of good travel guides to the area you intend to use for your setting — even if it’s your own hometown. Who knows what you might learn?

Expand from there. Pick up books that sound interesting, or that someone’s recommended, but that you wouldn’t normally read. Not a big nonfiction reader? Try a literary biography about a writer whose work you admire. Or start small, with essays or magazine articles. Get one of those “Best of” anthologies that come out every year, and read at random. They have them for nonfiction as well as for fiction; check out the one on travel writing or sports writing for a change of pace. Read about a religion other than your own — or any religion at all, if it’s not generally your thing. Thumb through a science journal or a technology magazine, and find out how tomorrow’s innovations might help you jump start today’s fiction. The mind is a funny thing, and you never know how something you read will play off the ideas already circling your imagination. You just might stumble upon the next big thing in romantic sub-genres.

A friend of mine reads like a demon most of the time. She goes through books so quickly that I practically drip envy from my pores when we talk about our latest reading; she easily zips through about twenty books for every single one I manage to squeeze into my schedule. But said friend is a writer of young adult fiction, and when she’s working, those YA reads pile up next to her bed and under the coffee table and all around her home. She won’t read YA when she’s writing YA, because she doesn’t want her writing style or her ideas to become infected by someone else’s work. That’s not to say she doesn’t read everything else, however. And the moment she finishes that draft of her WIP, she dives for her YA hoard like Carrie Bradshaw after a pair of half-price Manolos. Other writers I know still read only within their own genres while they work, and find it doesn’t affect their creativity or their voice at all. It’s an individual thing, like so many other aspects of the writing process. But if you’re finding yourself stuck in a groove, where your ideas just don’t seem big enough or fresh enough to break you out of the pack, try a little variety in your reading life. You never know where it might take you.

Last week, Karen Templeton used this space to discuss whether romance writers should indulge in critical analysis of their fellow authors’ work.

“Every once in a while, someone suggests that perhaps the genre would be taken more seriously by Others (and, perhaps, by Us, as well) if more romance authors reviewed/critiqued each other’s work. That lack of critical analysis – of romance by those who write it – is what separates romance from the literary Big Boys (and Girls).”

I did not agree with her argument about the nature of romance novels, but I’m with her on this part. It’s not the first time I have heard this theory that the genre is somehow being materially damaged by the fact that more authors do not engage in open disagreements about what is good or bad.

Are we talking about the same genre whose leading organization held a poll to define romance? The same genre whose organization’s newsletter is regularly filled with invective-riddled diatribes about how sexy vixens/vampires/virgins/Christians/old biddies/gay men are “ruining” romance? Whose members campaign for a complete overhaul of our most prestigious contest due to subgenre bias (and many argue that it would be more prestigious if it was not decided by a small panel of author judges)? I think there is plenty of open debate.

Templeton’s post sparked quite a long comment trail, including drop-ins from many romance authors who do review books. Alison Kent listed statistics from several major newspapers pointing out how many book reviews each had run in a given issue and how many had been written by fellow authors. The percentages were always a majority.

I think this is a misleading stat. Author reviews are to the book reviewing world what stunt casting is to a network sitcom. The more famous the reviewer, the more likely it will draw readers to the newsstand. The more controversial, the better, since everyone likes to be witness to infighting. Does anyone remember what kind of “reasoned critique” Curtis Sittenfeld gave of Melissa Banks’ The Wonder Spot, or do they just remember the part where she said that calling another author a chick lit writer is like calling her a slut? Read the rest of this entry �

Last Friday, over at the Lustbites blog, Olivia Knight wrote a nifty post about the differences between “erotica” and “erotic romance” in terms of the HEA ending. “With erotica sliding increasingly towards erotic romance,” she wrote, “the Happily Ever After question raises its dewy-eyed head with some peculiarly specific problems.” The problems she has in mind are structural, like “How do you keep your characters away from a romantic resolution until the end of the book while filling said book with swathes of horny sex?” and “If the Heroine’s having sex with the Main Man, why is that not Happily Ever After? If not, who is she having sex with, and why is she, when she fancies this other bloke? What is the defining moment of ‘romantic resolution’ if not the long-awaited shag and confessions of love?”

These are great questions, and her answers remind me, yet again, of just how smart and how conscious of craft any good writer, in any genre, must be. Clearly I need to read more of Knight’s work, purely for research purposes, you understand. What really hit me, though, was the opening comment about her post, from fellow Lustbiter Janine Ashbless:

Without wanting to be a bit of a downer, isn’t all “happiness” contingent and ephemeral? I mean, even the longest lasting, strongest, most passionate love affair is going to end one day in death. There simply is no HEA in the sense that romance writers mean.

Over the years that I’ve been teaching and talking about romance, I must have heard this sort of skeptical response a dozen times, from men and women both. Robert Waxler, at the PCA conference, called it a sense of the “mortal wound” that cuts short all our lives–and which, by extension, haunts and limits our happiness all along. On this theory, our desires are infinite, but our satisfactions finite, and if we were honest with ourselves, we’d never forget that sad fact.

Now, a lot of great poetry has been written with this thought in mind. Off the top of my head… Let’s see. There’s Yeats: “Man is in love, and loves what vanishes. / What else is there to say?” (“Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen”). There’s Dickinson’s poem 1205:

Immortal is an ample word
When what we need is by
But when it leaves us for a time
‘Tis a necessity.

Of Heaven above the firmest proof
We fundamental know
Except for its marauding Hand
It had been Heaven below.

There must be three or four poems–heck, three or four books of poems–by Rilke. And, of course, there’s Auden’s great couplet, “A crack in the teacup opens / A lane to the land of the dead,” which gives you the “mortal wound” in its smallest form and its largest before you have time to blink. (That’s from “As I walked out one evening,” one of the great love poems of the century.)

Against which gloomy Tuesday musings, let me pose this question: do you suffer from HEAngst? I don’t. To me, such lines and comments make intellectual sense, but no emotional sense. Even when I think about the worst losses in my own life–deaths of close family far too young, from cancer and worse–I don’t come away feeling that happiness is “contingent and ephemeral,” and the promise of an HEA an illusion, or even (ulp!) a literary lie.

Is this just a matter of temperament? Probably. But it’s also a contrasting set of ideas, and a whole other vision of love. “Life remains a blessing, / Although you cannot bless,” Auden insists in that same poem, a few lines later, just at the moment when he turns from eros to agape, from love as desire to love as compassion, or tenderness, or lovingkindness, or whatever you want to call what salves that “mortal wound.” Don’t romance authors and romance readers know this, too, silently shifting gears as they read from one form of love to another, or maybe believing, deep down, that any lasting couple finds a way to mix the two?

In the end, doesn’t the charge that there’s no such thing as a real-life HEA radically misunderstand–maybe on purpose?–what we optimists mean when we use the term? I recently stumbled across this observation by a Jungian analyst named Donald Kalsched, or at least a paraphrase of it, that made things a lot clearer for me. (The paraphrase I’ll quote comes from The Bones Reassemble, a brilliant book on liturgy by Catherine Madsen.) According to Madsen and Kalsched, when fairy tales mean when they end “happily ever after” is

no unreal state of euphoria, to be punctured after the wedding when the prince still shows signs of froggishness, but the joy of being set at last in one’s place, beyond the adversities of bewitchment, freed for the ordinary business of living and dying. [...] [The HEA] is not a fairy-dust rescue from the unacceptable…it is the triumph of intelligence, courtesy and courage over the cruel and the loathsome (149).

It may be true that, as Janine Ashbless said, “even the longest lasting, strongest, most passionate love affair is going to end one day in death.” But it’s just as true that couples can face that “unacceptable” fact, and all the others, with intelligence, courtesy, courage, and love. They do it every day, all over the word. And in many romance novels–maybe not all of them, explicitly, but in an awful lot of them, at least implicitly, and I’m betting in most of the best ones–isn’t that what the HEA ending allows us to remember?

A friend of mine received an email saying her reader was praying for one of the characters in my friend’s book. Though we shared a chuckle over it, it got me to wondering just what exactly makes a fictional character real? I mean, really real. How can an author take an imaginary entity and turn it into a living, breathing person that the reader laughs with, cries with, gets angry with and–most importantly of all–thinks about well after they’ve finished the book?

I tried to think of books I’ve read where I made a serious emotional investment in the character. Scout (To Kill A Mockingbird) immediately came to mind. Was it because Lee used first person? Was it because she tapped into so many universals that I was able to easily slip on Scout’s shoes and live vicariously through her? What was it and how do we, as authors, achieve it?

I’ve been to many characterization workshops where fill-in-the-blank forms for the character are provided. It includes all the physical traits, along with the character’s favorite color, favorite food, and favorite saying. Her greatest strength and weakness. Her greatest fear and biggest regret. Her family life, professional life and educational background. And, of course, her internal conflict.

These are all well and good, but there is a big difference between filling out a worksheet and making your characters come alive. For me, it all lies in the backstory. I make a timeline of my protagonist’s life from birth to the first page of my book. It is very detailed and takes up many, many pages in my composition notebook.

By the time I am finished, I have a heroine and hero with baggage. I have a heroine who won’t wear a crinoline because her mother’s got caught in a carriage door and was dragged to death. The reader may never even find out why my character doesn’t wear a crinoline. What’s important is, that I know.

As an author, what do you do to make your characters three-dimensional? As a reader, what characters are you still thinking about and why?

The tortured hero is always a popular topic in Romancelandia. They certainly appear to have the strongest hold on reader hearts, to the extent it’s rare to find a hero who is not tortured in some way.

But why?

Part of it is probably that it ups the stakes. Tortured characters don’t make for easy relationships, and well, reading easy relationships with little conflict would be boring.

I think a more important reason is their strength. After all, someone who has lived through hell and survived, battered though they may be, has a strength that has been tested.

Likewise with tortured heroines.

There is some escapism in reading a heroine who can kick-butt physically. A woman who’s an expert in half a dozen martial arts, is a crackshot with any gun and can kill a man in close-range with a knife.

Yet on another level, I’d rather read about a woman who’s pulled herself together after a disaster’s befallen her, dealt with it and moved on, because in life, you have to keep going forward.

Healing can be like cutting oneself up again, poking around inside to find that damn bullet, digging it out and then stitching it to hold the flesh together while it knits back up. Without the Novocaine, I might add. So it takes courage to make the choice to cut.

This veers slightly off-course, but is it just me who’s a little tired of having the heroine swing in to catalyze the hero’s healing? I recently read Megan Hart’s Dirty, and it’s the reverse for a change.

Of course, there are several problems with my theories. For one thing, I don’t recall reading any heroes who are not tortured, and therefore I cannot make a comparison. It might be because I read mostly paranormals, and you know, there’s no such thing as a vampire who isn’t tortured. *g*

Besides, I’m just one person, and as we all know, books and things related to books are terribly subjective, so what’s your point of view?

I think all of us booklovers are prone to random book cravings. They hit you with no warning—all of a sudden, you really need a suspense, or a bad-boy hero, or the misty green of Ireland (or more likely for those of us suffering through this wretched weather in the Northeast, a Caribbean pirate book). Nothing else will do. All the many, many books in the TBR hold no appeal because they don’t have that certain something you’re looking for.

Where do these cravings come from? A lot of times I just crave the new, hot, talked-about book. Hearing good things about a particular book from friends makes me want to run out and buy it—even if it’s not my favorite type of book. Or I’ll crave a new book by a favorite author (and then I’ll whine that they write too slowly, which is completely selfish of me). But a lot of cravings are more personal and serendipitous. Something in my life sparks an interest and sets me searching.

Movies and TV are maybe the most obvious source of reading inspiration. Law and Order makes me need some Eve and Roarke; the movie Tristan & Isolde inspires a craving for medievals and Madeline Hunter; Miss Congeniality always makes me want to read a Stephanie Plum book.

Sometimes a particular setting can set off a binge of similar books. My first foray into SciFi (Lois McMaster Bujold) made me wonder about SciFi Romance—leading me to Linnea Sinclair and a glom of her books. And it’s still not enough—I need more! (BTW, anyone have any good SciFi Romance recommendations? I’m not above using this forum for personal gain. *g*)

Other times I’m inspired by a train of seemingly unconnected thoughts that would hold no meaning for any but my own idiosyncratic brain. Like a few weeks ago when I met a man named Jack at work. And we were sitting in a meeting and it was, well, not the most titillating hour of my life, and my mind was wandering. I started thinking about my old college friend Jack, who’s an archaeologist, which made me remember how much I like novels set in Rome, which then made me remember that I had Michelle Styles’s The Gladiator’s Honor in my TBR, and didn’t that just sound like the perfect thing to read next?

I’m served cherry pie for dessert? *gasp* I’ve haven’t read a Crusie in months!! Time for a reread, but which one . . . ?

All these inspirations and cravings prove that my beloved books are never far from my mind. I’m always thinking about what I’m going to read next, and which books might satisfy my mood best. Because there’s nothing better than being able to put your hands on a book that will meet your worst cravings.

So what are your most recent reading inspirations?

Every once in a while, someone suggests that perhaps the genre would be taken more seriously by Others (and, perhaps, by Us, as well) if more romance authors reviewed/critiqued each other’s work. That lack of critical analysis – of romance by those who write it – is what separates romance from the literary Big Boys (and Girls).

I’m not convinced. And here’s why.

First off, romance is commercial fiction. And while commercial fiction can certainly be analyzed from a sociological perspective (dissecting tropes and general themes and such), precious little of it’s going to stand up to the type of nitpicking many of us had to slog through in our college literature classes. Nor should it be expected to, frankly. Not when 99.9 percent of romance authors don’t have the luxury of taking two, three, seven, fifteen years between books, as do many of our literary cousins. Most of us are just doing well to produce what we hope are entertaining, solidly crafted books in a timely enough fashion to stay on the radar and keep from starving to death. Done is the goal here, not deep.

Not that our books don’t explore themes, or can’t be well-written. Clichés are not mandatory, despite what one sees in far too many books. Nor are stock characters, despite the (lamentable) fact that stock characters – and plots – often sell far better than Fresh and Different.

“So,” you might say, “isn’t that exactly why we need more insider criticism, to showcase both the good and the bad, to raise the level of romance storytelling to a higher plane?”

Would that it worked that way. But, alas, it doesn’t seem to, far as I can tell. Why? Because, again, it’s commercial fiction. And an awful lot of readers obviously don’t give a rat’s bum about quality, they just want to escape with a fun or scary or tearjerking or sexy read for a few hours. It’s not about how good the book is, it’s about how good its sales are. Period.

So, yeah, mediocrity is alive and frighteningly well in our industry – although there’s always that pesky issue of who defines what’s good and what’s not. In any case, if reviewers haven’t been able to influence either readers or publishers to stop buying poorly crafted books, or, conversely, to snatch up the jewels that somehow sneak past the banality and thus ensure that author keeps getting those contracts, what the heck difference does it make if authors do the policing reviewing?

It’s often been said that romance authors are too “nice” to each other, that there’s some unwritten code against publicly bashing critiquing another author’s book. Of course, there are some authors who have no problem with reviewing other authors’ books, The Code be damned. Their choice. But does their doing so gain the genre respectability from outside? I doubt it. In any case, I’m not sure an author’s choosing to abstain from publicly criticizing her peers’ work stems from her being goody-goody as much as it does some innate, basic wisdom that says, You know, who needs the stress? Many of us feel we’ve got enough to do watching our own butts, thank you, without sticking them out there for everybody and her cousin to take pot shots at. Sure, we talk up books we love. When we get the chance to read, that is. But when you spend much of your life obsessing about how to get what’s in your head onto the page – and then whether enough people will get what you’re trying to do so you can do it all over again (yeah, writing definitely takes a certain masochistic mindset) – it does tend to make a body think twice about ripping apart somebody else’s work.

Yes, even when it’s so soul-suckingly bad you think it’s a joke.

Besides that, in a community of more than two thousand published authors, what criteria decides who among us has reached that exalted status where our opinion would be taken seriously by the world at large? Longevity? Awards? Bestsellerdom? Does getting one’s driver’s license automatically bestow the ability to explain how and why the car works? Okay, I suppose we can all name authors whose reputation would deem them worthy of such an, um, honor, but y’know…my guess is that they have better things to do. Like keep writing the books that put them up there on that gosh-darned pedestal to begin with.

That’s not to say authors have no say in molding the genre, outside of writing the best books they can. They can give workshops and teach and judge contests, if they wish. They certainly can – and should – cite weaknesses in the genre they’d give their eyeteeth to see addressed/fixed/banished. But once a book is in print…how much does their opinion really count, anyway, in the grand scheme of things?

IMO, there are plenty of folks already taking magnifying glasses to our books without a bunch of opinionated authors elbowing their way into the fray. And that’s fine – I’m not arguing against critiques or analyses in general, only against the idea that authors should feel obligated to horn in on the discussion. Especially since not only do I doubt doing so would cause any huge ripples in the literary world, but instinct tells me we’d more likely just end up sounding like a bunch of Mean Girls who get their jollies from ripping each other apart.

Which, if it’s respectability you’re after, would kind of defeat the purpose, no?