Career Aspirations
Photograph by Grandmommy, June 23, 2006
So for various reasons - not the least of which is the disheartening environment of the Faceless Corporation - I’ve been going back to What To Do With My Life speculation.
I don’t have a huge number of skills, but there is one thing I can do: I can write. (Not that it’s deeply apparent from my blog; but cut me some slack, I don’t edit this!) Unfortunately, writing is one of those professions where almost nobody is able to make a living at it. If you’re lucky enough to get a contract, you get an advance that might pay your living expenses long enough to complete the thing, and then you’ll sit in a brightly-colored trade paperback edition on a large table at Barnes and Noble, surrounded by the latest in post-adolescent chick-lit, until you’re quietly slapped with the $4.98 Bargain Book sticker and remaindered to the cheap part of the store. It’s an ugly business. I’ve read amazing books that never went anywhere; I’ve read a huge amount of crap that somehow has ended up on the bestseller list.
I have a sense that there’s some cash in romantic fiction - if you can break into it. I’ve done some research, and some reading. This is not your grandmother’s Harlequin romance; there are romance sub-genres for pretty much every fiction genre out there. Romantic suspense. Romantic fantasy. Historical romance. (I’ve never seen anything represent itself as romantic science fiction; that genre seems to be reserved for aging male authors writing wish-fulfillment fantasies populated by buxom, willing, and undemanding young women.) I could write pretty much anything, and there’d be a comfortable, well-defined niche in which it could nestle.
The reading, though, was educational. Harlequin jokes aside - some of these people are really good. I read Outlander - a classic of historical romance - and even though some parts of it made me laugh out loud at their absurdity, and other parts of it embarrassed the daylights out of me, I have to admit it was a damn good read. Ditto Glory in Death, the first of Nora Roberts’ futuristic mysteries. It’s a more traditional romance novel than Outlander, the setting notwithstanding, and initially I was disappointed to discover the same old formula. But I kept reading, and I got hooked. Seems the same old formula endures because, when done well, it’s genuinely compelling.
I’m not Nora Roberts. If I wrote 40 books - who knows? Maybe I’d develop some skill to bolster my little talent. But I haven’t, and I’m pretty clear on my strengths and weaknesses. I can write good characters, but I’m weak on plots. I can think of small vignettes, little stories, segments of beginnings and endings - but fleshing out the background and filling in the gaps bores me to tears, and it shows when I try to do it.
And then there’s the whole writing about sex thing. I have this odd tendency to giggle when I think about it. I don’t know where that comes from - I’m hardly a prude - but somehow putting it to words seems absurd. Not to mention incredibly difficult. Hardcore Penthose Letters-type stuff isn’t all that hard to come up with - all you really need is a thorough thesaurus - but really, that’s not romantic stuff. Romantic fiction needs to dwell in that grey area between obscene and clinical. One wrong word in the wrong direction, and the whole mood is shattered. You might as well be reading Gray’s Anatomy - or some “It Happened To Me!” short story on a $29.95 18-or-older web site.
Regular fiction would be much easier, in a way. (Of course, I’m still stuck with the Plot Problem; perhaps I ought to work on that one before I decide how to write up my heroine’s wedding night.) But my perception - realistic or not - is that if you can break into the genre that sits on racks at drugstores and supermarkets you’re more likely to earn royalties that can contribute something to your bills.
Because wow, the Faceless Corporation is no damn fun right now, and it’d be nice to do something else.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
