The Jennifer in question is Jennifer Crusie.  Almost all romance writers seem to have a Jennifer story.  Many have heard her speak.  Try to find one who hasn’t read her books  - other than me.  But, in my defense, I’ve purchased several.  Just haven’t gotten to them yet.  They are June reads, I promise.  She’s from the academic world and is NYT bestselling author.  She’s also a frequent speaker, devotee of craft and genuine cheerleader for romance writing and writing in general.

She spoke at last weekend’s conference.  Twice, actually.  One time on revising and one time in tandem with Eloisa James where the topic was academia’s view of romance books (it’s not good, in case you’re wondering).  Jennifer has some general themes, and some specific, that are worth sharing:

1.  We need to resist RWA’s attempts to define romance.  Specifically, the President of RWA recently made a general statement that romance is between a man and a woman.  Jennifer disagrees.  Vehemently, or whatever other word means a whole lot.  She said romance and love are concepts not limited to the man/woman relationship and RWA shouldn’t ignore romance and love of every other type.

2.  Literary writing is about style and constructing beautiful sentences.  Romance writing is about the story - about true and believable stories.  Never sacrifice the story.  She also made a comment or two about how the academic literary establishment has made itself irrelevant with its constant bickering and negativity about any book that isn’t one of its own.

3.  Craft, craft, craft.  This is the part where she reminds all of us not to write crap and not to settle for writing crap.  Every word is important so make every single one the right one and necessary to move the story forward.

4. She starts a book with a character idea, usually the heroine, because for her the story should be about the heroine’s journey.  The message is about a strong woman who struggles and wins.

I will not pretend to be Jennifer Crusie but here are my basic thoughts, you know, on her thoughts.

hk’s 1.  Yeah, stop trying to define romance because this is one of those times where you just can’t make everyone happy.  And while we’re at it, please, by all that is holy, stop making up names for erotic romance.  We have enough, thank you, and none of them make a lick of sense or mean anything. 

hk’s 2.  There’s room at the table for everybody.  If you like literary, read literary.  If you like a little of everything, like me, read everything.  Just stop apologizing, defending and otherwise annoying the rest of us.  If you like to read something say so and tell anyone who disagrees to kiss your ass.

hk’s 3.  No one wants to write crap.  At least I hope that’s true. The issue is whether or not we recognize this problem in ourselves when we so clearly can see it in other people’s work.

hk’s 4.  Yeah, yeah, heroine’s journey.  The hero tends to be much more interesting to me.  That probably says something about me but I’m not sure what.

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