It never fails to amaze me how some people react to the concept of romance. True, I don’t want a diet of nothing but tear-jerker romantic movies, but at the same time, they are enjoyable to watch upon an occasion. The same goes for my reading habits. Sometimes I want a thriller, or a murder mystery, or a collection of good poetry. Other times I want a romance, be it an erotic one, a futuristic, a vampire/shifter one, or something else.
But the stigma attached to romances is horrible. And so totally undeserved. Romances aren’t any easier to write than any other genre. The require the same skill with dialog (although some of the really old ones do kind of make me wonder some times), pacing is still very important, characters still need to be fleshed out, and so on.
Yet romances are viewed as being illiterate, and romance writers as hacks without the talent to write anything else. Romance readers are viewed as “escapists’ unable to handle real life, with unreal expectations out of relationships.
It’s frustrating. And one of those things that makes me wonder how that view came to be.
When someone asks me what I write, I get the “oh, those kinds of books’ when I answer romances. When I answer erotica, I sometimes get a worse reaction, but sometimes oddly I get a better one.
This questions is for the writers out there (don’t worry, those that enjoy reading romances but don’t write ““ or don’t write romances ““ I have a post coming up for you in a just a bit). What kinds of reactions have you gotten when you have told people what you write? How about close friends and family?
If you feel like sharing, I’d love to hear about it “¦
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