On Writing, Part 3: Tumblr Askbox Edition
So, a week or so ago over on my personal blog, I opened myself up to some personal questions and Tindersticks asked me this: “Is writing romance particularly difficult or different compared with other fiction? Or writing things with punk characters?” And while the glib answer is “No, not really,” I ended up thinking about the question for a while, because it’s a good one.
The question actually deserves answers of a couple of different levels. There’s the surface level, which I suppose falls into the realm of general writing advice, and then there’s the personal level where I address things specifically from my point of view.
On the surface, I feel compelled to mention the tired and worn old chestnut of “write what you know.” So, if you’re well acquainted with relationships (good and bad, from both sides), romance isn’t a difficult genre to work in. Similarly, if you grew up with punks, then writing about them should be relatively painless. Romance and punks differ from other types of fiction really only in terms of their subject matter, but that’s not a reflection on whether they’re more or less of a chore to write. In the end, the subject matter you choose won’t be the greatest decider in whether it’s easy to write about.
The thing about romance is that it’s universal and can be applied to any genre. You don’t even have to use ‘romance’ as a descriptor if you don’t want to. There’s the baggage that goes along with ‘romance’ that makes it hard to stomach from some angles, I know: maybe you don’t want to write about rugged physical laborers who are gruff and callous but have hearts of gold and will sweep your heroine off into the sunset. That’s cool. I feel you on that one. But if you’re talking in more general terms about, say, ‘relationships’, then that’s just emotional content and every book needs emotional content. So, in that sense, I not only don’t think it’s different compared to other genres, I think it’s all of them rolled together. Romance/love/relationships is the supergenre that binds the rest of them together.
In my life, it probably helped that I was raised by a single mother for my early years. I got a woman’s perspective on things; I mainly identified with women growing up (which included female best friends) and when I finally got around to dating (which was admittedly late—yay for socially-awkward nerds!) I was interested in seeing issues in my relationships from both points of view. That perspective has made it relatively easy for me to write romantic fiction now and it’s funny, because after a certain point the question transformed from ‘why write that?’ to ‘why did it take you so long to start writing that?’
Same thing with punks. I grew up with punks. Lived, dated, drank, moshed, laughed and cried with punks. Why the fuck did it take me so long to start writing about them? I don’t know. I don’t really have an answer for that. I guess I’m just glad I finally have, because they deserve to have their stories heard. Stories beyond “punks are shit disturbers who only want to tear the government down and watch it burn” or “punks are wastes of space who just want to sit around and huff glue in abandoned buildings,” both of which still litter the media landscape. And yeah, a lot of punks want one of those things (and some of those want both), but you know what else they want? To find someone and be happy and in love. You know, just like anyone else. So, I guess I’m trying to use what I know to fill a gap out there and speak to punks, rather than about them. Punks need more stories about punks (fiction about punks actually written by punks seems to be in short supply), and everyone needs stories about love and romance, because what underlies that is hope and hope’s a commodity we’re all drastically short of these days.
