When I was eleven, my family and I visited my grandmother in the hospital. I didn't know it at the time, but she was there to die. I remember when we went into her room, she was reading a romance novel with a picture of a shirtless Fabio wannabe on the cover.If you knew my grandmother, you'd know how tight laced she was. How she would have to leave the room if someone burped, or said anything even slightly close to the line of inappropriate. I think when she realized she was about to die, she decided to finally live her life unafraid.
It reminds me of this short story I read a while ago, about this Japanese couple. I can't remember what it was called, I'ts been a while. Anyway, the husband did something that brought him dishonor, so he asked his wife to kill him, and then kill herself. The wife agreed, and killed her husband with a sword, and then went throughout her house setting things right, completing her nighttime ritual before going to bed, and as she stands by the front door to lock it, she pauses, and then leaves the door unlocked.
That moment in the story has always resonated with me. That freedom from fear that comes when you've reached the bottom. When you are close to death, there is nothing left to fear. When you've reached the worst, the little worries no longer matter.
hmmm.
So this has nothing to do with romance novels anymore, does it?
What I'm trying to say, is that despite a societal shame placed on lusty romance's, people still buy them. That despite a kind of bad name on sci fi or fantasy novels, they are the most widely written genre. In fact, historically, when you think of novels that have lasted hundreds or thousands of years, most of them could be classified as Genre fiction. Think Shakespeare's Midsummer Night Dream, or the Iliad.
Even Jane Austen, for her time, wrote what wasn't considered high art. She wrote novels for women. I read she was embarrassed by her work, that when ever she had a visitor, she would cover her writing with her embroidery.
I think societal shame and embarrassment over the kind of writing you do is something to get over. I am the kind of writer that I am. I don't care if I never find respect. I can only write the stories that come into my head.
I think the point is to write with what one commentator of Jane Austen's work called, "youthful exuberance." I think the point of good writing is to write like no one else will read it.
In fact, maybe the key to writing well, is to write like you are dying.
See what I did there?
~Sheena
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