Writer's Group AAR

This last Monday was the monthly meeting of our local writer's group, and we talked about all kinds of interesting things. We had a discussion on the "formula" for romance novels. One interesting thing that I learned that made a lot of things make sense is that romance authors are usually contractually obligated to include a sex scene every 'X' number of pages...usually right around every 60 or so. I guess once an audience is conditioned to have an expectation of how things flow in a typical genre you have to follow it. As a person who constantly struggles with pacing, it seems like forcing me to add specific action points at specific times in a story would only aggravate and worsen my writer's block. I would get so focused on including the required story points that the rest of my writing process would just die.

Our host had informative handouts...as always...on the business of writing. Some of them covered topics like how to do a pre-order if you're self-publishing and how to get your books in front of librarians and other vendors. I haven't really focused on the business side of this industry yet. I'm still learning how to adhere to a writing schedule of any kind.  Once I feel somewhat comfortable with that aspect, then I'll tackle the business of publishing in a way that might even someday make some money...maybe.

There was other discussion about gender bias in certain genres and how authors will take on pen names that are either gender neutral or flat out gender opposite in order to publish their works. One of the more interesting parts is how women still have a difficult time in the sci-fi genre despite the fact that a woman created it (Mary Shelley ring a bell?). The other side of the coin is that several of us know of men who write under a woman's name in the romance genre because publishers believe, and maybe rightly so I don't know, that the target  audience will not buy a romance novel written by a man. Apparently there's a perceived notion that men can't be romantic. Who knew?

As far as the piece I handed out last month went, only one person there had read it. The other few who took a copy didn't make the meeting. However, while she said that it wasn't her genre of choice, she did read the whole story. She said she was lost on some of the genre specific language and skimmed past the swear words, but on the whole she found it solid. I was...let's go with pleasantly surprised. There is one other member who is reading my stuff, but she didn't take the one I submitted. She's reading The Affairs of Dragons and said kind of the same thing.  Not her genre, but she's enjoying the story. I'm good with building an audience one reader at a time.

Enjoy the rest of the week.

-Tole