Category: Editing Rant

Editing Rant: Possession is not Romantic

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Sira Anamwong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

No, no. NO!

Possession is not romantic.

Slavery romance is not a kink I have, and it is one I don’t think is ever healthy for the participants. Avoid it. Period!

In a recent romance, the prince kept saying “mine” – and, f-no, not when the female has been ripped from her home and enslaved. Don’t care if it is insta-love, don’t care is the woman is super-strong-were, don’t care if the prince had his own problems and has my sympathy, don’t care if the prince wants to free her – the possessive term, while sexy when both sides have the option of agreeing to equal possession is NOT okay when one is wearing a slave collar and the other holds the leash (even though he really, really doesn’t want to).

Aside from possession terms, the romance had the perfect use of insta-love, woman is super-strong-were, romantic hero (a prince) has problems which create great sympathy, and a story overall was way too big for the 62 pages it was stuffed into.

But romance is about equals coming together. Both of them bringing something to the plate. I love it when a strong man and strong woman say “mine” to each other. If only one side (usually the male) says “mine”, and the other side doesn’t immediately agree that – yes, I am yours but I also own you in equal measure – then the power dynamic is off.

Watch out for this in your writing. I see it far too often where someone holds leash-level power and stakes a “romantic” claim to someone who isn’t in the position to say no.

That’s slavery. Not a relationship.

In this month of the celebration of love AND black history, learn to tell the difference.

Editing Rant: Recommending Others

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You may have followed my struggle in November during NaNoWritMo to catch up on the blog, including and especially the Author Spotlights. It was a struggle to create over thirty of them. So why do I do it?

Recommending Others.

This is part of the business.

In many industries, others in the business are competition. Publishing is much closer to farming than manufacturing in nature. The ground needs to be prepared and constantly taken care of to produce a product – in this case the audience needs “food” faster than a writer can prepare it by themselves. By recommending others, a writer keeps their audience in the reading mood and, at the same time, keeps themselves in the audience’s mind while waiting for the next “harvest” to come in.

Farmers who live near each other, or writers in the same genre or same convention circuit, trade ideas and techniques to produce the best product possible. They support each other, help each other to keep their environment healthy, and create a community.

Ways writers do this include providing blog tours, hosting writer groups, and talking other people’s books up during conventions. I personally do it through book reviews, author spotlights, other cool blog posts, attending a book club, and including a featured book on my video Editing Rants.

So if you decide to join this crazy industry, remember to talk up other authors and their books. It might be the connection you need with your audience.

WRITING EXERCISE: Do one thing to promote other people’s work today. Recommend a book on Facebook, talk up a book with a friend, write a book review, attend a book club, make a blog post, etc. Write in the comments below to give other people ideas. Include a link to what you did, if it is linkable.