Once upon a time I wrote a romance book
and I hated it. Don’t get me wrong,romance is the best—the tension, build up,
and strangely enough the insecurity on both people’s part. Most of all I love
the flirt. The ‘I like you and I want you, but I can’t come out and say it
because that would just make me creepy’. What makes most romance wonderful is
the flirt. However, what I don’t love is the purple prose.
Who among us has ever described their
vagina as a flower? Okay, I have, but in the context that I don’t have weeds
there … don’t judge. Publishers have categories for their
genres, and romance tends to be sweet and flowery. Stronger adult language oftentimes
changes what would be a romance book into erotica.
Once labeled with that explicit R
rating,the plot of the book then comes into question. Erotica is known for sex
where the plot will often suffer but that is not always the case. Due to my
inability to say “rod” over “cock” I will forever be given the side eye for
substance. To be honest, the book I wrote was supposed to be sweet but not
downright puritanical. Once the publisher hacked it to death with that red pen
of hate, the story became unrecognizable. It took something away from me and
the story to give in to that PG-13 rating. After that, I vowed to never bend to
those flowery words that only Shakespeare could pull off. Instead I’ve decided
to stick with my new-age heroine. “Take off your panties,” she demands of the
hero, but with a wink first … you know, because she doesn’t want to fuck with
his ego.
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