I've been popping those "chick-lits" like they were Chiclets

A couple of months ago, someone who I thought was a friend read my first novel and said of it,

"it would slide squarely into a modern romance/chick-lit genre."

She also said some other, more tactless things, but I don't want to hash that over again now. At the time I had not read any actual "chick-lit." Since then I've read Little Pink Slips by Sally Koslow, some but not all of the stories in the This Is Chick Lit anthology, and I just finished How To Sleep with a Movie Star by Kristin Harmel.

I didn't read them because of what this "friend" said. Even before she made that remark, I'd had the feeling that the kinds of stories I like to tell were, if not exactly "chick-lit," then certainly "chick-lit"...adjacent. See Andrea Schicke Hirsch quote from earlier this week.

As for romance, well, there is a certain amount of the classic narrative, to this story in particular(love found, love tested...). I'm a romantic guy anyway, and my stories are colored with (there's no point in denying it, nor do I particuarly wish to) sentiment and desire.

A romantic comedy, is how I like to think of the book (I hope) to-be in question.

But reading this latest example of the real "chick-lit" genre, I found myself thinking: Are they all this formulaic? Because I read two novels, at random, one because I saw a good review in Entertainment Weekly, the other because I liked the essay its author wrote for that anthology by women writers on Judy Blume.

And they both turned out to have some pretty big things in common, besides the superficial things like both being about women working in publishing. If I believed these books, I'd believe all women really need to be happy is boys, comfort food (or drink) and shoes.

So like I say, I'm just wondering if they're all this formulaic. I'm also wondering: Am I crazy? Am I crazy because I think my novel is not just a romance-though it is that, and I'm proud of it, though not a "romance novel"?

Am I crazy because I think it's actually about something?

(Not all of these are things I expect most or any of you to have answers about. This is just what I'm wondering, this afternoon.)

Unfortunately, thinking my story is actually "about something" doesn't make me feel any better, even if it is. Because I'm cynical and fatalistic today and I don't think it matters.

As I type that I ask myself, "is that really true?" Or do I just believe-or am only afraid-that it is? I don't want it to be. I want to tell you about the flame of hope that leaps up from my heart and says No! That's not true. That flame is there.

But it's really, really hard to keep it lit when it feels like you're the only one. You have to keep it sheltered from the wind outside, and keep blowing on it enough to keep the sparks glowing, but not enough to blow it out.

These are some of the things I've been thinking today.