Years ago, working in a temporary job position, I met a woman from India who became curious about my career when I told her I write romance novels. Actually, what she was curious about was my support of western culture love and marriage, the idea of choosing one’s own partner as opposed to a traditional arranged marriage. I knew why I loved “love” – it was why I’d become a romance novelist in the first place, because what I wanted more than anything in the world was to find and fall in love with my own soulmate. But, thoughts like this aren’t as easy to articulate as you might think, particularly when the person you’re trying to articulate them to opposes them. And they begged the bigger question. I’m in love with being in love, but, why is that exactly?
Prior to finding my own true love, I relied heavily on fantasy as a way of discovering who I was and what appealed to me on a romantic level and later, as a way of expressing my creativity. I think Ike Graham (Richard Gere’s character in Runaway Bride) explains this well when he says that many people mistake attraction for love. I can’t tell you how many times I did that, and what a recipe for disaster it equates to in real life. But, attraction is an excellent tool for a writer. When we’re attracted to our characters, we can essentially trick our creative brain into falling in love with them, creating stories that are every bit as deep as those of reality, and equally heartwarming.
When I met my husband, I actually hit a minor snag with regard to my writing. For a number of years I’d been engaging in “book relationships” with the characters in my stories and though I dated in real life, I’d yet to take that ultimate step of falling in love. When it happened, the void in my life was filled and I wondered if I still needed romance novels, or even wanted them to be a part of my life. After a great deal of soul searching, I realized that stories were and always would be a part of who I am. Though I was living my happily ever after, there was nothing stopping me from giving my characters their happily ever after, too.
Having recently regained my sense of what being a writer meant to me, it didn’t come as any great surprise that while, in the early days of the pandemic, many writers struggled to remain in the joy of fantasy mode, I just kept on writing. I was glad to have extra hours back in the day and having decided to try something I hadn’t in the past, outline future stories while editing the one I was currently working on, I had a whole new lease on writing.
That isn’t to say that I’m always ready to hit the keys running. Motivation, even to do something we love, takes work. As the pandemic drags on, our minds are filled with worrisome thoughts that make it easy to get discouraged and which make fantasizing about wishful scenarios a daunting task. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about Pollyanna, more specifically about her Aunt Polly who served as a major inspiration for Hannah Rabourn in my title An Amorous Dance. But, for a moment, I’d like to focus on Pollyanna herself, who often gets a bad rap as we sometimes reference her name when referring to someone who looks for the good in everything, as though setting an impossible and even irritating standard for the rest of us. In actuality, we can all learn something from Pollyanna’s story. We need not look further than the world around us to see that when we look for the bad in mankind expecting to find it, we surely will. Trying to see the positive side of things takes work but it can serve us in a very positive way. It reminds us that there is a positive side to everything, which, for writers, makes escaping into the world of fantasy possible.
Looking at where things are today, I find myself thinking back on that question regarding western culture romance. I believe I could answer it much more efficiently now. Romantic love, love between two people who are truly meant to be, is a miracle. There are miracles happening all around us, miracles that inspire, miracles that save, miracles that keep the world thriving even when the chips are down. I’m incredibly blessed to have found true love. Living its wonder, I know we can get through anything.
I know that’s why the love-at-first-sight trope is not a favorite with me. After thirty years of marriage, I’ve learned love is a meeting of mind, heart and soul. That doesn’t happen in a moment. Thanks for the post.
That’s so true, Anna. I think that’s one of the great things about romance novels – they demonstrate through a long-winded series of events that love stories must be played out in full, and that just can’t happen in a chapter or two in a book, or in real life.
My response to the Indian lady would be that in a culture such as ours, with most of us from mixed ethnic heritages, our assumptions about life, the big decisions as well as the small details that make day-to-day living, are far different from person to person. Not many of us live in ethnic cohorts that exactly match our ethnicity anymore and even if we do, we often seek the “other” rather than that nice ____ boy or girl our parents would easily find acceptable. Because we have so many differences, it is important to find someone whose ideals and behavior are a fair match to our own. Not necessarily the same, mind you, but complementary. Our differences are overlaid by typical American manners, so it’s not necessarily easy to find that person. I write about people who find true love across ethnic barriers and age barriers and other kinds of differences. True love is our modern idiom for a solid match. At first it may seem crazily personal and individualistic, and on many levels of course it is, but marrying for love in our culture is also extremely practical when we don’t have a strong common heritage to help us weather life together and be happy. Love is the glue.
Great point, Irene! You’re absolutely right – love is what keeps us together. I hope we can both inspire others with that message through our writing!