Okay, picture this:

You’re at a spouse’s holiday party and it’s a little hoity-toity. You’re wearing a black cocktail dress that’s only a bit snug across the boobs, yet still wishing you’d just bitten the bullet and bought a new one because the panty girdle is really cutting into your thighs. You’re sipping a white wine spritzer–and milking it, because God knows you don’t want to end up pole dancing in front of the president of your hubby’s company. You’re trying desperately to remember the names of all the people you’ve met at least a half-dozen times before, at various events over the years…and probably failing miserably. You’re wishing you could get home because you don’t really know (or particularly like) any of these people and the babysitter’s costing you five bucks an hour.

In other words, you’re a totally normal person.

And then, it happens. A blowhard with a big red nose, thinning hair, a cheap suit and a cheesy, light-up Christmas tree tie, who has not been nearly as circumspect about his drink consumption, saunters up and says, “Oh, hey, you’re the one who writes those SMUTTY SEX BOOKS aren’t you?”

It’s not like it’s a big surprise, because most people who work with hubby already know you’re a romance writer. And yet, all nearby conversation immediately stops (especially since this guy’s voice is loud enough to be heard from outer space.) Somebody titters, a few heads tilt in to eavesdrop, somebody glares at the guy for being a jerk, a few others shift their eyes, embarrassed for both of us.

And everybody waits for your response.

Got the picture in your mind?

I’m sure you do.

You might be chuckling over this scenario, but let me tell you, it’s a real one. And while the details might be a little different, I guarantee you that every romance author out there has come face-to-face with an idiot like this…or they someday will.

There’s a lot of conversation about how romance readers are perceived, and believe me, I’ve been on the receiving end of that snottiness, too. The superior smirk on the face of the guy at the checkout counter at Barnes & Noble, the eyeroll of the person in the next chair at the hotel pool. There’s a definite attitude and general assholeness toward anyone who reads and enjoys romance novels.

But you want to get a double-whammy? Let people know you not only read them, you write them!

I’ve done book signings where people have commented, “Oh, I don’t read THOSE books!” more times than I can say. I’ve had friends and family members ask if I ever want to write a “real” book. (In fact…this happened in my own house, at my kitchen table, one week ago, with a new neighbor we’d invited over.) Dozens of people have asked how I can possibly write such sexy stuff. Some of them (men!) ask where I get my ideas. (This is usually accompanied by a salacious eyebrow lift.) I’ve had my work called smut and trash to my face, the bodice-ripper term is often thrown around. A small-town newspaper where I lived once put my photograph beside an article that claimed romance was pornography. And of course, just about everyone tells me they intend to write a book someday too. A children’s book. Or something more “important” than just a silly little romance.

Sometimes, you can get the insult from the most unlikely of sources. This is another 100% true story–I met a woman at a neighbor’s Christmas party a few months ago. She’d heard somebody mention I was a published writer (though she didn’t know what I wrote.) She told me she was also a writer, and when I asked her what she wrote, she stammered and hemmed and hawed, saying she loved to read literary fiction and someday hoped to do that. A little further into the conversation, she admitted she belonged to an organization I’d surely never heard of–Romance Writers of America. But of course, she didn’t really read those books, or want to write them in the long term, it was just a way to learn more about the craft and stepping her way up to lit fic.

Wow. Talk about denigrating her own work and insulting mine all in one breath. Quite a trick, that.

She was, as you might imagine, visibly mortified when she found out who I was and what I did.

So, you get the picture, I’m sure. As romance writers, we really get hit with the kind of snide, crappy comments that you just wouldn’t say to “regular” people. I would never go up to a surgeon and say, “Hey, you know, someday I think I’ll cut into somebody’s brain, too, sure looks easy!” Nor would I dream of waving at my mailman and saying, “You’re one of those crazy people who’s gonna shoot up a post office someday, right?” Or ask the clerk checking me out at K-Mart, “What’s the matter, not classy enough to get a job at Macy’s?”

So why do some people display no common sense and no common courtesy when it comes to my job?

Wish I could say I knew the answer. I don’t. I only know how I respond to it.

I used to get annoyed and self-righteous and offer some catty response like, “Isn’t it a little dangerous to display your stupidity in public like that?” (Okay, usually I can’t think of a bitchy response fast enough, so it’s probably something more along the lines of “So’s your old man!”) but you get the picture. Sometimes I try to reason with the person, quoting sales statistics, extol the virtues of an emotion-based, monogamous relationship between two consenting adults, etc. I have gotten defensive and ice-cold. Shrugged and turned away.

But you know, I’ve come to realize over the years that none of it’s worth it. I don’t have to get mad, nor do I have to defend what I do, or the genre I love. Some people will just never ‘get’ the appeal of a feel-good, fun, emotional story with an ending that isn’t going to leave you wanting to drink a glass of cyanide. It’s not my job to convert them, or to show them that they’re idiots.

That’s a given.

All I have to do is write the best darn books I can for my real audience–the people who know a story that lifts you up is always better than one that brings you down. Funny how that works…because people who lift you up rather than bringing you down are my favorite kind, too.

PS: How’d I respond to the douchebag at the Christmas party? “Yeah. Why? Do you have some kind of problem with sex?”

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 18th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Leslie Kelly. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.