There was a moment of realization that happened recently. My bag that I carry with me everywhere — that through the years has contained emergency pull-ups, diaper wipes, band-aids, and various other-people miscellaneous — now carries my headphones and my Kindle.
My stuff.
Mine.
What in the world? Did I stumble into an alternate dimension?
Heck, even the bottle of sunscreen is more for me than anyone else, because I never know when I’ll be caught in the sun and I burn easily. Have I really reclaimed my life?
So I’ve been reading A Court of Thorns and Roses. In my middle-aged perspective, I find myself thinking that it depicts sexual coercion more than anything genuinely romantic (so far, since I’m 50% through the first book). Between the spells that force people to have sex, and assaults that leave bruises (complete with a “It’s all your fault that I did that to you” afterwards), I’m not seeing much that I would consider “healthy relationships” going on. Then when Tamlin said, “I’ve had many lovers, but none of them understood me,” I snerked and thought, Oh no, he’s that guy. 😆
And that’s why I’m not the heroine of a romance novel. Because Mr. “I’m so misunderstood” can go take his wounded self and whine about it somewhere else. I have a microwave dinner to eat and a bag that I’ve finally reclaimed as my own, so please keep your issues to yourself and don’t burden me. I’m not carrying around your glasses wipes and acetaminophen in my bag anymore! Maybe the real problem is that people do understand you and they don’t like what they see. Ever consider that? Sheesh.
But I don’t blame women for writing and reading that sort of stuff. Honestly … I wrote stuff when I was married that I wouldn’t write now. And today I started writing a story that I would have never been able to write when I was married. That got me thinking about the subtle ways that a writer’s immediate social circle could influence what they write, particularly with heterosexual relationships. I think the question of “What women want” is difficult to separate from, “What women think they should want,” and “What women think men think they should want.” With a fawn response thrown in for good measure. It’s kind of a mess.
I want to make it clear that I actually do really like ACOTAR. I’m not overcome with enjoying the sex stuff, but the dark scenes are delightfully dark. Romance novels tend to have a surprising amount of gore and murder in them. 😆
Last week I dusted off my old flashdrive and read some of the stories that I’ve written, going clear back to 2003. You know what conclusion I ultimately came to?
I liked my writing style better before I got married.
I remember being told over and over that I needed to drop the dreamlike poetic prose because my communication style was too blunt and terse for that to truly be the way I thought. Yet … It actually is the way that I think. I like painting stories as expressions of emotion and atmosphere, not as a technical explanation of events. What I don’t like are heavy visual descriptions, but a metaphor that sends chills down the spine is irresistibly delicious.
And isn’t that what storytelling is supposed to do? Inspire emotion?
