When Good Advice Goes Bad (part four)

I’m back with another insidious entry into the series I call

WHEN GOOD ADVICE GOES BAD

This week, we’ll be tackling the tricky Start With Category myth.

There are many “good” reasons that this particular argument abounds in RWA and in the writing community in general.

1. Harlequin and Silhouette publish a lot of books. A LOT. According to their website, the company releases 110 titles per month. Most publishers are lucky to hit that per year. Now, granted, some of these are in the single title lines, like RDI, Signature, MIRA, HQN, and whatever special release backlist program they’ve got Nora Roberts on, but the vast majority are from the category lines. In other words, category novels are a big market.

2. Harlequin’s category program is one of the few publishing houses that welcomes submissions by unpublished, unagented writers. They take great pride in “grooming” new writers and their in-house philosophy is occasionally willing to devote a lot of time to working with new writers to bring their books to a publishable stage. I’ve heard Hq editors romanticizing the image of “the housewife scribbling away in her basement” and editors at other houses marveling on how much time Hq editors are willing to devote to editing books they haven’t contracted (and might never).

3. It’s a road frequently traveled. A lot of people recommend you start with category, because some of the biggest names in women’s fiction have done just that. Nora Roberts, Suzanne Brockmann, Lisa Gardner, Jenny Crusie… the list goes on and on. Who wouldn’t want to emulate these ladies’ careers? They’ve obviously done *something* right.

4. There’s a built-in audience. When you sell single title, you are out there competing against the above-mentioned big names. No one has heard of you, and it’s harder to get into bookstores and into the hands of readers as a new author. However, category authors have an easier time because they are published as part of a line. Many readers go out and blanket-buy whatever Silhouette Desire, or Silhouette Intimate Moments, or Harlequin Presents that happens to be on the shelves that month. Other readers subscribe to a particular line’s book club and have the books delivered to their door. My friends who write both single title romance and category romance tell me that they often make more on the shorter category titles than they do on the long books. If you are part of a category promotion, like a continuity series or a series connected to a big name author, you’re even better off. With a cateogry book, your publisher isn’t promoting the author so much as it is promoting the line — if you write a Harlequin Presents, you’ve got a built in audience that knows it’s been reading your type of book for the last half-century. Can you say Waldenbooks bestseller?

Okay, so those are the good reasons. Now for the bad one:

Start with category because it’s easier.

Um, no. Wow, no. No no no no no no no no. Where do they come up with this shit?

The books are shorter. That means you have to tell a compelling love story in less space. There are more of them, which means trying to find your niche in the category line, trying to find something that hasn’t been “done to death” or to give a new twist to an old tale is not an easy prospect. That known-quantity thing can fight back. Harlequin editors know they have a certain expectation to meet from their readers. If a reader is going to pick up a Desire because she’s been reading Desire for years, then the editor can’t publish anything under the Desire name. She has to publish something that will fulfill the Harlequin promise.

Nothing is easier if you aren’t very good at it, and I know too many writers who have been banging their heads against the category wall, trying to shoehorn their writing into the category requirements and in other ways tortured themselves due to some fool idea that “it’s easier” to write category romance. Newsflash: it’s not easier to write anything. A writer might find it easier to write science fiction or category romance or tragic love stories or police procedurals or cozy mysteries or children’s stories narrated by animals or erotica. A writer might be stretching themselves and expanding their natural talents into any of the above fields. And a writer might never be able to get the hang of erotica, or science fiction, or non-human narration, or the needs of the category romance. To those people, writing a good category romance might be completely beyond their means. They might write excellent hisotrical mysteries or thrilling, hard-boiled action adventures, or lyrical, depressing slice-of-life tales, but cateogry romances? Forget it. Their writing is just not wired that way.

You can be an excellent watercolorist but crap with a lump of clay. You can be a master of blank verse but abysmal at sonnets. You can win marathons but suck at sprints. There’s no “easier” if it’s not what you’re good at doing. If you’re good at category, then it’s a good place to try (for the first reasons mentioned above). But not ever because “it’s easier.” It’s not. It’s really, really not. (I have written several category romances, and I found them all heaps harder to do than my one chick lit. Some might argue it’s because I knew I had a contract, and I’m not saying there’s no truth to that.) If you aren’t good at writing categories, and you know you aren’t, then find something else you’re good at.