Week Two of Guest Blogging
THURSDAY, MAY 15, 2014 0 CommentsI Wrote A Romance Novel? — A Guest Post by Author Rachel ToorRachel Toor
When I was first asked to blog for this site I thought: Romance? I wrote a romance novel? I thought I had written a book about failure and loss, about eventually seeing your way past hard, bad stuff and finding out who you are, about dealing with the horrors of the college admissions process, about loving a member of a (wrongly) despised species, about discovering a passion (running) and looking at the ways that can shape your identity. Then I realized that—duh!—I’d written a romance novel.
Would I want to read a book in which the main character didn’t bounce off an amorous interest? Not so much. Love is such an essential part of life and literature that it didn’t occur to me to highlight and separate it out. It’s always there.Every novel is in some ways about failure and loss, and every story is a love story. The genre has been around for a long, long time. My favorite romance novel isPride and Prejudice. How much fun is it to hate haughty Mr. Darcy at the beginning and to wish you were just like Elizabeth, always quick with a witty comeback? How much more fun to realize how wrong we had been about that arrogant hottie? I love being wrong about people. As far as romance goes, among my other faves are little Jane Eyre and dark and stormy Mr. Rochester, broken Heathcliff and selfish Catherine, and the geeky, ailing pairing of Augustus and Hazel. There are plenty of novels that do not have love stories at their center, and many that do don’t end happily, but there’s a real pleasure in seeing the court and spark of love, even if it sometimes goes sideways.It’s said that a literary novel starts where a romance ends—when the characters use the backs of their hands to wipe the spit off the happily-ever-after kiss and start arguing about whether the toilet paper should roll over or under or if the toothpaste should be squeezed from the middle or the bottom of the tube. (For the record: the toilet paper should roll over—I’ve change my mind about this—and it’s better to get toothpaste that stands upright so you don’t have to deal with the whole issue.) The beginnings of things are always more exciting and fun than the middles, which are stable and therefore boring, and the ends, when things can get icky and messy. 
One of the crazy things I know from many (many, many) years of dating is that at the start of each new romance, no matter how old you are, you are transported back to high school. The sleeplessness, the sense of excitement and anticipation, the way that lines from songs or poems suddenly mean so much more, how you want to learn everything about the other person, and how much, in the process, you learn about yourself—very little about all that changes. Each new relationship promises hope and the prospect of a better you.When I started writing I knew my character, Alice, would find a runner boy to fall for, a tasty morsel of a dude who loves the same things she does and who helps her see things a little differently. I knew that when they ran together they would head into uncharted territory. The act of running with another person is an intimate experience. You’re moving together, and breathing hard, and you’re out in the big world and also in a tiny little bubble that consists of just the two of you.What I didn’t know was that her experience would feel so familiar to me. I may not get as tongue-tied around a new crush as Alice does when she’s with Miles, but the sense that a part of you has opened and bloomed like a flower after a long winter, that suddenly the universe is twitching and alive and so are you, that there’s never enough time to say everything, that being apart even for a few hours is painful—that rush, that jolt, never fades. With each new person you roll out a version of yourself, the best you have to offer. You fall for him, but also for the idea of who you could be with him by your side. A life that felt sepia-toned turns suddenly, vividly, Technicolor. You wait for the phone to ring, you loiter in spaces you shared together, you feel bloodless when he’s not around. You think: No one has ever experienced anything like this before.
I’ll end this post with one of my favorite love poems. e.e. cummings says it far better than I can.
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyondany experience,your eyes have their silence:in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose methough i have closed myself as fingers,you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i andmy life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,as when the heart of this flower imaginesthe snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equalsthe power of your intense fragility:whose texturecompels me with the color of its countries,rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens;only something in me understandsthe voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
Rachel Toor is an associate professor of Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University and the author of three nonfiction books. Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish her first Young Adult novel, On the Road to Find Out, in June 2014. Rachel lives with her dog, Helen, who raced in her first half marathon this February. She was 4th dog (out of 42).Visit her online at http://racheltoor.com.posted in: Author Guest Posts tags: e.e. cummings, Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice, Rachel Toor,romance, The Fault in Our Stars, Wuthering Heights
When I was first asked to blog for this site I thought: Romance? I wrote a romance novel? I thought I had written a book about failure and loss, about eventually seeing your way past hard, bad stuff and finding out who you are, about dealing with the horrors of the college admissions process, about loving a member of a (wrongly) despised species, about discovering a passion (running) and looking at the ways that can shape your identity. Then I realized that—duh!—I’d written a romance novel.
Would I want to read a book in which the main character didn’t bounce off an amorous interest? Not so much. Love is such an essential part of life and literature that it didn’t occur to me to highlight and separate it out. It’s always there.Every novel is in some ways about failure and loss, and every story is a love story. The genre has been around for a long, long time. My favorite romance novel isPride and Prejudice. How much fun is it to hate haughty Mr. Darcy at the beginning and to wish you were just like Elizabeth, always quick with a witty comeback? How much more fun to realize how wrong we had been about that arrogant hottie? I love being wrong about people. As far as romance goes, among my other faves are little Jane Eyre and dark and stormy Mr. Rochester, broken Heathcliff and selfish Catherine, and the geeky, ailing pairing of Augustus and Hazel. There are plenty of novels that do not have love stories at their center, and many that do don’t end happily, but there’s a real pleasure in seeing the court and spark of love, even if it sometimes goes sideways.It’s said that a literary novel starts where a romance ends—when the characters use the backs of their hands to wipe the spit off the happily-ever-after kiss and start arguing about whether the toilet paper should roll over or under or if the toothpaste should be squeezed from the middle or the bottom of the tube. (For the record: the toilet paper should roll over—I’ve change my mind about this—and it’s better to get toothpaste that stands upright so you don’t have to deal with the whole issue.) The beginnings of things are always more exciting and fun than the middles, which are stable and therefore boring, and the ends, when things can get icky and messy. One of the crazy things I know from many (many, many) years of dating is that at the start of each new romance, no matter how old you are, you are transported back to high school. The sleeplessness, the sense of excitement and anticipation, the way that lines from songs or poems suddenly mean so much more, how you want to learn everything about the other person, and how much, in the process, you learn about yourself—very little about all that changes. Each new relationship promises hope and the prospect of a better you.When I started writing I knew my character, Alice, would find a runner boy to fall for, a tasty morsel of a dude who loves the same things she does and who helps her see things a little differently. I knew that when they ran together they would head into uncharted territory. The act of running with another person is an intimate experience. You’re moving together, and breathing hard, and you’re out in the big world and also in a tiny little bubble that consists of just the two of you.What I didn’t know was that her experience would feel so familiar to me. I may not get as tongue-tied around a new crush as Alice does when she’s with Miles, but the sense that a part of you has opened and bloomed like a flower after a long winter, that suddenly the universe is twitching and alive and so are you, that there’s never enough time to say everything, that being apart even for a few hours is painful—that rush, that jolt, never fades. With each new person you roll out a version of yourself, the best you have to offer. You fall for him, but also for the idea of who you could be with him by your side. A life that felt sepia-toned turns suddenly, vividly, Technicolor. You wait for the phone to ring, you loiter in spaces you shared together, you feel bloodless when he’s not around. You think: No one has ever experienced anything like this before.I’ll end this post with one of my favorite love poems. e.e. cummings says it far better than I can.
somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyondany experience,your eyes have their silence:in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose methough i have closed myself as fingers,you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i andmy life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,as when the heart of this flower imaginesthe snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equalsthe power of your intense fragility:whose texturecompels me with the color of its countries,rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closesand opens;only something in me understandsthe voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
Rachel Toor is an associate professor of Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University and the author of three nonfiction books. Farrar, Straus and Giroux will publish her first Young Adult novel, On the Road to Find Out, in June 2014. Rachel lives with her dog, Helen, who raced in her first half marathon this February. She was 4th dog (out of 42).Visit her online at http://racheltoor.com.posted in: Author Guest Posts tags: e.e. cummings, Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice, Rachel Toor,romance, The Fault in Our Stars, Wuthering Heights
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