Why Don't You... Write a Bestselling Book?

Candace Bushnell planted the seeds in December of 2021. A podcast mention of her live show sent me into a fit of book mania and I acquired her entire catalog of which 4 Blondes was superb and One Fifth Avenue, a blast.¹ I was sad I hadn’t read her sooner and wondered what other obvious writers I’ve been overlooking. I resolved to be less snobbish, more open-minded.

And it was the unforgivable Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarity—whose ridiculous novels I have no qualms about recommending to friends because all my friends have senses of humor, even the respected critics—that tilled the soil Candace sowed.² The rain, I guess, was Beautiful World, Where Are You?, which I always want to call Beautiful World, Where Art Thou? and so I do. In reading it, I was made susceptible to the latest discourse around Sally Rooney, which had me thinking about the whole of popular fiction: what makes fiction young, what makes it adult, what makes it popular, is most popular fiction just young adult fiction packaged for adults, etc. These are the conditions under which I had a thought that periodically if not relentlessly presents itself to every writer: if I put my mind to being stupid enough, could I produce something that makes me money?³

I’ve entertained this notion before. In fact, for years I’ve tucked it in the back of my head like a heavy piggybank saved for the day when the hammer must be brandished. But last year, for the first time, I felt inclined to tread further down this notion’s golden bricked path. Why not attempt to write something many people would want to read?

The answer, of course, was that I don’t know what people want to read. Thus began the horrible project of self-education, which kicks off, as it always does, with me placing three succeeding orders on BetterWorldBooks.com because I somehow can never wait long enough to fill the cart a single time, after I’ve completed my research; the research and the buying have to happen simultaneously, in dueling browser tabs.

I bought The Hate U Give⁴ , The Fault in Our Stars⁵ , a Jodi Picoult novel I can’t remember the title of⁶ , something by Nora Roberts, two Colleen Hoover books⁷ , The Bridges of Madison County, and three dozen others that may or may not warrant mention at a later date. Crime fiction like One For The Money does nothing for me and serious fantasy asks too much. (I have some patience for “Tagyartaä grasped Freffdorf’s hand as they watched the two suns rise over the spectral city of Blaaúm,” but not a lot.⁸ ) So I narrowed my fields of interest to (officially designated) YA books and romance/smut, of which USA Today is apparently considered the ultimate authority. I didn’t even know USA Today had a bestseller list until a few months ago. Now, naturally, I intend to be on it.⁹

I already knew YA and children’s literature could be wonderful so I was happy to do an (ongoing) deep dive into its past but I was surprised by how well I took to romance. Fifty Shades of Grey, for instance, is a competent, refreshingly artless piece of work. I had a good time reading it and I thought the sex scenes were decent. It’s so, so funny to make the male love interest a young, bootstrapping billionaire who flies his own helicopter and becomes obsessed with a boring virgin. I wish I’d thought of it.

I recently read this profile of E.L. James in which she’s revealed to have been totally unreasonable about the process of turning the book into a mainstream film, and yes, of course she was. Fabulous, I wanted her to be. We can’t tamper with the source material for base cinematic purposes. There are no circumstances under which it’s acceptable to disrespect this material.

Upon further investigation, I discovered that this is customary in straight romance novels though Fifty Shades takes it to a sublime extreme. The heroine’s love interest—who is often but not always rich and/or famous— is overcome by and fixated on the heroine from the moment he sees her; he falls in love and, importantly, in big-bonered lust with her instantly.¹⁰ His recognition that they’re soulmates helps him put up with some modest resistance aka “feistiness” on her end, which is activated by those all-too-common straight girl struggles: “this man is too sexy,” “his penis is too big,” “I’m too independent to fall in love,” “he’s best friends with my older brother,” “I’m in town to reopen my dead grandfather’s ice cream shop, not have multiple orgasms on the counter after-hours,” and the dreaded “he’s 6’6’’ and I’m so tiny that I only come up to his washboard abs…in heels!”

The underlying desires are so clear, the yearning so intelligible: to be worshipped and thirsted after by the hottest man alive, who loves you just as you are, is never threatened by your girl boss side or put off when you cry, and could not, can not, simply WILL NOT EVER get it up for anyone else. But tension and delay makes sex scenes better and confessions of love more satisfying, so despite his complete devotion, there have to be some four-inch fences for the couple to hop on their way to the HEA. It’s endearing, if also exasperating. (The obsession with fast forwarding 10 years for an epilogue in which the hefty-dicked ex-SEAL is a doting “girl dad”¹¹ wearing his daughter’s tiara pushes me to my limits and not in the exciting ice cream shop way.)

I appreciate the accurate descriptions of non-penile arousal, which are absent in most sex scenes especially when written by men. (Maybe Nicholson Barker is good at it? I have to rustle up my copy of House of Holes because I can’t remember.¹² ) Women can also fuck up fucking¹³ but the record shows straight men are egregious in this regard. Source: the Bad Sex award, JSF’s doorknob moment, I could go on. Like men, women masturbate with all variety of objects and get horny at insane times. The weird implement or circumstance isn’t the problem. You just have to have some insight into and familiarity with CVV¹⁴ response in order to describe it convincingly. Guy writers are prone to “the clatter of her breasts”-type shit. Please, Gentlemen, write what you know: jerking off.¹⁵

For about 96 hours, I burned through a slew of these books then collapsed on my bedspread in exhaustion. My initial amusement, titillation, and curiosity faded quickly due to repetition and the rarity (among all human endeavors, to be fair) of witty execution. What’s tricky about romance tropes is that they exist for good reasons—they’re inherently compelling—but the bloom can be fondled off the rose and indeed, almost always is.¹⁶

If you care to sample something that seems (in my still inexperienced opinion) indicative of today’s mainstream, my favorites so far are The Hating Game, The Love Hypothesis, and It Happened One Summer.¹⁷ All of them have corny/cringey moments and predictable plot “twists”, but I liked the characters and laughed when the authors intended me to, which is a crucial measure of quality. When it comes to the inescapable Emily Henry, I see but do not feel the appeal. This profile of her is excellent, and offers a more thorough overview of the genre than I’ve given here.

Rest assured, romance will return in a future episode of Meant For You and I’m afraid we’re going to have to get graphic. But next week, I’ll be revisiting a few YA books I loved as a girl and sharing my ponderation on the overlap between romance and YA. ¹⁸

1  Killing Monica had glaring problems but I liked it anyway. Sex and the City was perfection, and to my mind not at all like the show. Is There Still Sex in the City? and the YA Carrie books, however, were massive disappointments. Thumbs up on Rules for Being a Girl.

2  To be clear, Nine Perfect Strangers is joyless and I implore you not to bother. You have my blessing to read anything else of hers.

3  This idea, notoriously, launched Otessa Moshfegh’s career so it can be admitted to without sacrificing self-respect—though I feel should add that I’m not really a fan of OM. For me, the most haunting work of hers has been McGlue. I and the infallible group chat enjoyed Death in Her Handsbut like Eileen, her short story collection, and My Year of Rest and Relaxation, it left me with nothing I can discern or recollect. Truthfully, between reading about her or reading her fiction, I’d pick the former.

4  This and On the Come Up impressed the hell out of me.

5  It’s a moral imperative to tell you this book is dogshit but also, mercifully, the most forgettable thing I’ve ever read and that includes shipping instructions and nutrition labels.

6  Still haven’t read it, it just looks so boring. A family has a secret, or something? Sisters like each other, or don’t?

7  And Jesus Christ were they garbage.

8  I was intoxicated by Witchmark and still endorse that trilogy. But my initial reaction was exaggerated due to a long period of abstinence from that type of fiction; I was like an amnesiac seeing a firework for her first time since The Accident. When I finished Stormsong, my reaction was more along the lines of ok, I remember now… Genre fiction is fun, I don’t need to have a cow about it. Also sorry to say I liked the gay love story much more than the lesbian.

9  I’m joking, sadly (for my agent.) It’s hard for me to care about that sort of external validation on account of my low ambition and convenient disdain for careerism. I like the prospect of money, though, if money is in fact associated with sales. I may never know!

10  This is true in The Notebook, which sucks.

11  Barf.

12  A future letter topic featuring D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Nicholson B., A Sport and a Pastime guy, perhaps?

13  There’s a line in Fix Her Up that reads “the giant appendage made Georgie feel like she was sitting on a full aluminum foil roll.” I’ve never in my life seen such a sitcom-y instance of someone looking around a room and then saying (writing) the first thing their eyes fell on. (Here, I’ll try it: “His penis felt so massive inside her, like an….external USB microphone.”) At least go for a pepper mill or something if you’re in the kitchen, damn bitch. This book was released by HarperCollins, which means a team meeting between the editor, copy editors, and author is well overdue. Let’s get to the bottom of how this was allowed to happen so we can heal and move forward.

14  CCV: an acronym I just made up for clitoral-vulvar-vaginal. Gynecologists: is there an actual usable word for this? Is it something obvious that I will be embarrassed to hear? If so, don’t tell me.

15  In the right situations, a man jerking off is very sexy—romance novels often include at least one scene of it—so I swear I’m not (only) being a bitch when I say this.

16  I’m thinking here of a goodreads reviewer who was mad about the plot engineering required to provide their preferred trope: “I’m bored of the marriage of convenience rich parent is withholding money or inheritance until the person is married blah blah blah. I mean it’s 2023. Let’s come up with a better MOC situation.” Uh….exactly. It’s 2023! What’s the way to marry two people who don’t want to be married if not finance? A wizard’s curse? A 30 Rock-style language mix up? Social media likes/a reality TV episode/Tom & Nicole style multi-year performance, which still boils down to income? If you don’t think money should be a factor, you picked the wrong planet on which to be attached to this storyline.

17  These are listed in order of my liking-ness, and The Love Hypothesis has the least amount of sex in case that’s useful to know. (I discourage you from investigating its fan fiction origins until after you read it because once you know who the guy is supposed to be, it’s really distracting.) It Happened One Summer has the raunchiest sex of the three, albeit nothing that crazy (though it’s extra improbable given one partner having been celibate for seven years and in a not-hot marriage before that.)

18  Gird yourself for this amount of footnotes going forward because it’s exactly how my mind works. Footnotes all the way down.