^The Authors’ Atrium

I finished another one this week. Another romance written by a man, another heroine who sighs, trembles and waits to be rescued from a feeling the author has clearly only read about.

Men write desire like they’re describing weather from indoors—eighty miles away. They know it exists, they know roughly what it looks like, and they have no idea what it costs to stand in it.

If you want fire, ask someone who’s been burned. I’m tired of being handed a candle and told it’s a blaze.

Ah, the annual “men can’t feel things” post. I was wondering when we’d get to it. Right on schedule, like jury duty and a dental bill.

I’ll save you the trouble of a rebuttal: I’m a man, I’ve written about love, and I’m apparently a soggy book of matches. Noted.

I’d be hurt if I could still find the part of me that was available for it.

You see thunder as the punchline for lightning—and prefer the former to the latter. That’s what you miss. The lightning is the source of the thunder. The heat. The friction. That flash you can’t control.

Your idea of a love scene is two people being glib until one of them isn’t.

Don’t pretend this is a defense of anyone’s feelings.

When a man writes a woman in love, he swaps atmospheric charge for a balloon rubbed against a wool sweater.

I’d feel sheepish for that last line, if I were you.

You’ve read a pile of bad books, decided the problem was the author’s anatomy, and called it a thesis. That isn’t an argument, that’s Lizzie Borden with a library card.

Bad romance gets written by everyone. Plenty of women write a heroine who charges headlong into the fray of l’amour, guns blazing, before seizing the first eligible bachelor and dipping him like it’s a Gone With the Wind re-enactment.

Name me one. One woman of yours who gets to burn on the page without you hunting for the extinguisher.

I’ll wait. I’ve got all day. I know deflections take time to build.

I can’t. Not one you’d accept, anyway, and I’m too lazy to lie convincingly.

What can I say? I flinch.

Every time a scene gets too honest, I reach for a one-liner the way other people reach for a seatbelt.

I’ve been calling it restraint for years.

You don’t write longing like you read about it.

You write it like you stood out in it all night and came back drenched, but unafraid to do it again.

I’ve never managed that. I look for my slicker, boots and umbrella and still grouse about the rainbow.

Sometimes a rainbow is worth the storm.

I looked into this some time ago, for an unrelated reason, and the readership numbers on romance are fairly consistent: women who read the genre report preferring male authors over female ones, and the reason they give most often is sensitivity. They say men write emotion with more care, more attention to the small gestures. The sample was large, and I checked the method twice.

Of course you checked the method twice.

Hawthorne, I can’t thank you enough.

You would.

Says the woman whose idea of a comeback is to never leave. I’m scorched.

I’ll tell the statistics you said hello.

And to correct something else I just observed, if a thunderstorm is occurring at night, a rainbow would be impossible.

Although, I suppose a moonbow could occur.

This comment has been edited by the user.