Thread by @JenReadsRomance

I want to talk about this rather amazing thread in light of the 60 RITA books I read and my recent trip to RWA, I guess.

Other people (Bree has a good thread, for example) have way more insight on the publishing side. I want to talk as a reader/critic.

https://twitter.com/NMamatas/status/1161295930487795712

I wish we could talk about writing quality more in romance. Maybe it's a knee-jerk response to outsiders who think **all** romance writing is terrible. Are we afraid if we start a conversation about writing quality, outsiders will jump in and say I KNEW IT?

And mea culpa: I didn't talk too much about writing quality in the RITA books I DNF'd, and maybe I should have. In some ways, it's an easy dodge, because the books with poor writing seem to travel with a sidecar of terrible content. It's easier to talk about problematic content.

And, OF COURSE, talking about "bad writing" is always charged with power dynamics. Of course it's punching down when MEN say that ALL romance writing is trash. And I flinch when I've seen white readers say "oh the writing was terrible" when the author is BIPOC.

I would like my fellow white readers to interrogate that---what does it mean when we flippantly say a book by a BIPOC author is poorly written? Is that really about them? OR IS IT ABOUT US?

What about when a ww writes a terrible book and our knee jerk defense of the book is to call valid critiques an "SJW"?

What about when white authors say that the reason BIPOC didn't final is because they are poor writers.

NWLs have weaponized this in a lot of awful ways.

But we hardly ever talk about the raw material that a writer is sending through the publishing pipeline. Maybe it's easier to pretend that writing quality doesn't matter; but I think it does.

It doesn't help that it's impossible to fully define what we mean by good/bad writing. Good writing is kind of like porn--I know it when I see it.

lol.

But I am here to tell you that LOTS of the RITA finalists (which as we know were almost all by WW)--- were poorly written. They were not good books by any metric.

And I'm not talking about copyediting errors. I'm talking about FOUNDATIONAL problems--from word choice and sentence construction to plotting and characterization. Problems that were probably unfixable.

For example, and I am not telling anyone the name of the book, so don't ask me. But I was reading one book that was just so terrible that I typed up a page of text and ran it through a Lexile* calculator.

It came back as a 4th grade reading level.

Yes, lexile level is a fundamentally useless metric here, but something about that book---its word choice, its sentence structure, its choppiness---made me scurry off for some sort of data. It was like reading the writing of a child.

THIS WAS A RITA FINALIST.

And that leaves me with three very big questions:
1) What do we mean when we talk about excellence in romance?
2) Why are poorly written books finalists?
3) Why don't the authors writing TERRIBLE books know that their books are terrible?

first things first: #1 COULD BE something that might not be that big of a deal: Maybe lots of readers value a good story over "good writing."

I have felt that way about books I've read. Maybe we can talk about it. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

But it's the answers to 2 and 3 that I worry most about:

2) Does the RWA membership recognize good writing? If they don't, this is a problem. Because a professional organization of writers should have a stronger commitment to and knowledge of craft.

3) I DON'T FUCKING KNOW.

Have you ever read that essay about professional tennis players by David Foster Wallace? He makes the point that there's a huge difference in quality and talent between the top 10 players in the world and everyone else.

esquire.com/sports/a5151/t…

A lower level athlete getting onto the court with Serena Williams will get HAMMERED and know it. I often joke that the Olympics would be better if you put some poor schlub who swims at the Y every morning in lane 9. THEN WE COULD SEE HOW GOOD THOSE ATHLETES REALLY ARE.

I mean---the Y swimmer is competent! She swims every morning. She's probably pretty good compared to other swimmers. But doing something every day won't make her an Olympian. Something is missing-- her body? raw talent? aptitude?

A more personal example: I am now the romance correspondent for Kirkus. And sure, I am a competent writer, but when I read The New Yorker, I CAN TELL THAT THOSE WRITERS ARE MILLIONS OF TIMES BETTER THAN ME.

So my conclusion is similar to one the OP makes as a side comment: maybe bad writers who write bad books just don't read enough. And not just romance, enough of everything.

They don't know their own books are mediocre because they don't read enough to see the difference; They don't read enough to know how badly written their own books are.

They can't tell Serena is a million times better because they don't watch Serena play.

I'm sorry, but when a big name romance author that has lots of marketing dollars cannot name romances she's read, and her books aren't good... the secret we all suspect: the books are bad because the author doesn't know what good romances look like bc they don't READ romance.

And yes, marketing dollars can move books. But for how long? I just don't know the answer to that.

But when we talk about what sells and what doesn't...but we never talk about writing quality? I think we're lying to ourselves.

This feels like a huge can of worms. But books are not interchangeable widgets. And God knows I think all writers deserve good editing; but good editors can't work miracles if the source material is a disaster.

As my SFF writer likes to remind me, there's no Clarion for romance writers. Maybe there should be.

clarion.ucsd.edu