How reading romances helps solve problems!

Yes! I got to travel! Here I am at Cheverny 

on the Loire Valley, France. 

I have been writing for more than 40 years. Beginning during the 80s, I practiced writing for newspapers (a financial column!), magazines (Maryland history!) and the occasional interview of a Washingtonian in the news.

Why? In those days, to impress the trad publishers in New York or London with your proposal for fiction, one needed a resume. I got one.

Along the way, I also got a corporate job and wrote for the CEOs and for their testimonies before Congress and Senate.

But on the Metro in the mornings, I wrote long hand (no laptops then!), on yellow pads. On Saturday mornings, I transferred it all to my first computer.  That was a giant thing as wide as your current flat screen tv and 10 times as deep. The printer was a thing called dot matrix. Letters of the alphabet formed by dots. Fun.

I joined Washington Romance Writers as one of the original founders. There, we taught ourselves to write fiction. Plotting, characterization and motivation were actual classes or meeting topics.

We worked hard. I also joined a small group of would-be authors. We were 8, all unpublished when we started. Eight years later when we began to disperse, move away, etc., all but one of us was unpublished. 

What we learned together was that writing was a joy, a release, a process...and a job. Because once you had a contract, you most likely wanted more. And so did your publisher.

We wrote romance because, female all of us, we understood that emotion and attachment very well. If a few of us also wrote mysteries or murders, we did it because we also understand that often people let you down, betray you and leave.

But love of romance stayed. That was because we saw change in our sisters out there in the world. They had college degrees and were paid less than the men with equal position. (I raise my hand on that one...until I told my corporation I had to be paid equal to a man or I was not interested in their promotion of more work but less pay.) We saw that women needed to stand up and stay up. We saw they needed role models and not just Gloria Steinem or Dolly Parton or a new Congresswoman from San Francisco named Pelosi.

We understood that romance was the starry beginning of a relationship but that without talking, that little thing called loved died. If you don't share your experience, strength and hope, you cannot find your similarities or your divisions.

Our daughter's anniversary gift!

Winston Churchill once said that the benefit he received from joining his mother for tea each afternoon was that he learned the 'Fine Art of Communication'. Those afternoons taught him invaluable lessons he used with world leaders. 

Reading a romance allows the reader to experience that art. It shows the way.

Writing it also helped me in my marriage. Now almost 57 years of it, we still have our moments when we must re-learn each other's experience, strength and hope.

Romances still feature conflicts that are real and terrible if unresolved.

Read one. Two. More. If you have a problem in your relationships, you will find the one that fits your situation. And it will give you a shot of confidence that it can be solved. 

Reading Romances helped women grow a pair!

What romance did for you?
    As a reader since..oh…mid-70s and a writer since 1982, I climb my soapbox to tell you what this little genre did for women.
    Today, I woke up to the news that Gloria Steinem has died. Age 92, she worked hard, girl. So did Betty Friedan. They were Big, everywhere all at once. My first “feminist” reads in books and magazine form.
    They told us how, despite good-girl grades and college degrees, we were tied to old ideas, our kitchen, our aprons, our parents', boyfriend’s or husband's perceptions.
    They told us to take control of our own money. Right. We did not have the ability to get credit cards. I had my first store credit in 1963. My first credit card? I think it was 1973. I bought my first car with my own bank loan at age 22. (My mother was shocked I was able to get that.)
    I had a BA at that point and a teaching position at a local high school. And my conversation with the car dealer? He did not believe I could get the loan without my father co-signing!
But reading romances by the new authors who put a bit of sex into their stories caused a sensation. They hit the charts and hit our hearts…and our self-perceptions in new ways.
    

For some, the bedroom scenes were the most liberating. "Lying back and thinking of England” was no longer the way to go. Somehow you found your excitement…and conveyed it, judging your partners on their insights. (And let me say, the birth control pill and other devices did not even become general topics of discussion until about 1963. Think on that.)
    Aside from learning where your vagina was and how to think about it in mating, we read romances and decided that the men we appreciated had a few noble qualities that all men should boast. Protectiveness is great, but when it is bullying or abusive, it has to go. Loyalty is required and catting around is not only dangerous physically but grounds for separation and divorce. Honesty is demanded. Devotion is desired. Humor helps. Life really is a cabaret. At 82, I am entitled to affirm that. And the ability to devote yourself to surviving the slings and arrows requires a back bone—and a funny bone.
    Today, nearly five decades after the  explosion of romances for sale, we see they are still the most popular fiction. We still need to reach women of all ages.
    Steinem never stopped fighting. 
    We romance authors never stop fashioning the liberating messages that, frankly and sadly, are still necessary.

   When the notion of "trad wives” can imprison a woman’s mind, education, finances and her children, we still need romances.
    Romances tell us that you can stand up for yourself, lady. You can control your own bank account, your retirement plan and your welfare if and when you find yourself alone in the world. You can even demand of your boss equal salary. That was a new concept when I was told in 1986, that I could have the position of v.p. in my company, but not the salary. I said, "No." They promoted me and gave me what they would have paid a man.
    

Romances were always for, by and about women. Only a handful of men have tried to write them and were successful. 
Should you encourage your daughters to read them? Of course. Choose the level of sexuality you want her to read, and then talk to her yourself about your own experience and truth.
    Pick up a romance today. A historical will give you perspective on the world you live in—and the one you should live in. A romantsy will give you a flight of fancy and fantasy that most likely shows a fierce woman as the lead. A mystery will most likely show you a woman who figures out the crime, alongside one who might just have fallen victim to it.
    Each type can lift you up. Show you women of courage. Women who fought to find a good life and a fair one for themselves.

    Besides, what else can you do intimately in the comfort of your chair, to show you the road to confidence and liberation?  
    Not liquor. Not your boss. Not your husband or significant other.
    Only you and a good book.