Oh, I must. I really, really MUST!: A Rant from Rach

On to my rant of the day...

Fellow Seton Hill Graduate and author friend, Tonya Burrows, posted a link to this article this morning, and as I read through it, all I could do was laugh.

The author of the article, Palash Ghosh, says, "After all, romance novels fall into the same sordid category as soft porn, violent comic books and anything written by Stephen King in the realm of literary "guilty pleasures."'

Oi! Where do I even begin to respond to that one, folks? Sordid, porn, guilty pleasures? YES PLEASE. I mean, sign me up, now. Are these supposed to be negative things, I ask you? In a world where women are finally (FINALLY) starting to own their sexuality, delve into the unknown, come into their own sexual identities, these are all good things. Now this article focuses mostly on historical romances, which I only read occasionally, but when I do, I LOVE them. I've noticed I really enjoy romances of all types, though I do tend to feel like something is missing if they're too saccharine sweet or all the naughty things are BCD. 

Ghosh goes on to say, "I know many... smart, attractive, successful, 'liberated,' modern females who nonetheless find some kind of deep satisfaction and vicarious thrill from delving into hyper-romantic, contrived and extremely unrealistic tales of handsome, manly heroes falling in love with virginal women, enduring a series of adventures, then inexorably ending in a happy resolution." 

Hmmm... let's inspect this. Smart, attractive, successful and liberated women can't enjoy a FANTASY of a handsome, manly hero?? Um, hello? Where is this rule written? And let's just compare the male fantasy portrayed in romance novels to the perfect blonde bombshells in those um... art films the average American Male fantasizes over. How is a man in romance novel any more "contrived and extremely unrealistic" than Pamela Anderson or Jenna Jameson? 

Let's move on to the article's statistics, courtesy of the Romance Writers of America: 

"*More than 9,000 romance titles were released in 2012, yielding sales of about $1.44 billion (more than triple the revenues generated by classic literary fiction), making it the biggest portion of the U.S. consumer market at 16.7 percent.

*Some 75 million people in the country read at least one romance novel in 2008, but most are long-time dedicated consumers of the genre." 

Hmm... then there's this little nugget, "I had thought that romance novels accounted for a very small fringe corner of the literary market." - If that's the case, then you must have been living under a rock, never been inside a store, read the NYTimes Bestseller List, or seen the headers on Amazon, Facebook, or any other type of website advertising romance novels. 

As you're here reading this erotic romance blog, you're an obvious fan and I need not continue on about all the ways in which the romance novel rocks, so I shall just say this... 

Women don't really have any desire to go back and live in a time when petticoats, corsets, and gloves were required at all times, when the only interests she was allowed to have were reading, painting, and childbearing, when she could not own land, earn money (except with her body), vote, have a say in her marriage or anything else as the article suggests ("Perhaps most women [even the ones who get lost in romance novels] do not want to go all the way back – but it is obvious, they are unhappy with how the world has turned out in the contemporary era.") 

It is simply this... 

Sometimes we (men and women alike) get disillusioned with our lives, get bored in the bedroom as well as the courtroom, and yearn for a fictional world on paper where we can live vicariously through words and characters who are bold enough to love with all their hearts, to fight with all their passions, and face all of the world's sometimes insurmountable obstacles to hold tight to the one they love. 

And so I ask you, readers, what the hell is wrong with that? 

~Rach

I Lost NaNoWriMo & It Felt Great!

Howdy ladies and gents,

Well as I'm sure you're all aware by now, November is over. The leaves are gone, the turkeys are safe for another year, and the twinkling lights of the impending holidays are downright blinding in some areas.

It also means National Novel Writing month is over. Just in case you missed my other posts on this freaking craziness, it's 30 days to write your ass off. The goal: to write 1,667 words EVERY day for thirty days straight, for a grand total of 50,000 words! It's crazy town.

And I completely failed.


Up until four days before the end of November, I had only written 8,913 words. That's it. If I push it, I can write that in a single day and there I was four days and miles away from 50,000. I knew even I couldn't write 41,087 words in four days, one of which was Thanksgiving Day. Now my family is understanding of my crazy schedule, my skipping dinners and movies and other things when I'm in the writing cave, but even I couldn't skip out on the turkey and stuffing. So that night, after everyone was gone and the house was settled, with a belly full of delicious food, I locked myself in the writing cave and got to work. I had three whole days off from the day job and I was going to use them, damn it!

Thursday night I wrote 2,500 words. They were a bit slow going, the story was dusty after having not been touched for weeks, and I was getting back in the groove. But I wrote. And I stayed up all night doing so. Exhausted, at 2 a.m. I crawled into bed with a big ass smile on my face. I felt like me again. For the first time in almost eight months, I was a writer!

Friday I got up, not so bright and early because I'd been up all freaking night, but early enough, and once again locked myself in the dungeon. I then proceeded to write 5,000 words in four hours. I was officially on fire. I took a couple little breaks in that time, but no big ones until I was really in need of a long one. So I took a couple hours off, ate a real meal, came out of the dungeon and visited with animals and family, and then I went back to it. Another 5,500 words later, I was beyond exhausted, as I'm sure you could imagine. And I knew I had a full day of writing ahead of me on Saturday. Once again, though, I went to bed knowing my world was right again.

I wrote another 6,000 words on Saturday, and then I just couldn't do anymore.

Here's the little graph and stuff to show how I did with my word count. 

My total word count for November was 28,528. In terms of the 50,000 word count goal, I barely made it past the 50% mark, a failure in all respects. NaNo is supposed to teach you to make writing a daily habit, to build it into your life, and laugh off writer's block because you just have to keep writing to get to that word count goal. I will never be a daily writer. I've come to terms with this, made peace with my writing style, and have worked to build my life around the way I write.

But this year's NaNo reintroduced me to myself, my inner Muse, my love of writing and telling stories, and I couldn't be happier. Do I wish I had a solid draft to revise through the month of December? Sure. But as my momentum levels out and the day job and real world intrude into my writing cave, I will remember during the next 30, 60, 90 days that I am a writer, that I love writing, and that I have to make it a priority and get my ass in the chair.

So I failed, and it was fantastic.

Who else failed Nano this year? And was it as good an experience as mine?

~Rach