At last year’s Taboo Naughty But Nice Sex Show in Edmonton, Susan Lyons encountered a sad couple. Lyons, who is a romance-fiction writer, was presenting a workshop called Writing “Hot” for Fun or Profit. The couple were about to be split apart for work reasons but hoped the workshop could keep them bonded over long distance.

“She was so shy, she couldn’t say certain things to him,” Lyons told the Georgia Straight in a coffee-shop interview February 3. “So I coached her to write in the third person. If you explore your fantasies as someone else on the page, it offers you that little bit of safety.”

How did it turn out for the couple? Lyons never heard. But she does know, from experience, that writing your own romantic fiction is a great way to keep the inner fires burning. As the author of the Vancouver-set Awesome Foursome series of books, along with several erotic novels published through Kensington Aphrodesia, the former lawyer keeps her own mind alive by exploring interracial relationships, risk-taking and risk-averse characters, and this city as a setting for invigorating romance—plus sex, lots and lots of sex.

“After your relationship settles into a slow waltz rather than that magical first dance,” the West End resident said, “romance writing can help you remember what you felt when you first got together, and refresh the relationship a little bit.”

Here’s how to start, Lyons recommends. Relax. Run a bath and break out the wine. Do whatever you’d do to promote romance normally. Then, imagine your fantasy and write with a wild mind, as author Natalie Goldberg discusses in her book Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Shambhala, $11.95). No judgments, no editing—just let yourself spill it.

“You want the original genuine, strong feeling to come out,” Lyons said. “Inhibitions are the killer of any creative fiction.…We tend to write soft, especially women. You can fix strong writing that’s ungrammatical, but you can’t fix weak writing.”

Lyons also suggests thinking of something you and your partner did together and describing it in writing. Include the five senses. How did you feel emotionally at the time? Can you expand on it? Fantasize what might have happened. Alternatively, describe something you’d like to do with your partner, either in the safe third person or the more assertive first. It doesn’t have to be in story form, either. Lyons suggests writing your partner personalized romantic coupons, like the ones for sale in Valentine’s displays.

For serious writers, on Saturday (February 9) North Vancouver romance author Nancy Warren is teaching A First Date With Romance Writing, a one-day course aimed at romantically minded dreamers who want to spell out their fantasies on paper. She’s got a solid rep, with more than two million copies of her books in print, and they’ve been translated into 17 languages. There’s still space available, at Simon Fraser University downtown. (Call Continuing Education at 778-782-5093 to register for the $110 course.)

Warren pointed out that although there are 10,000 members of Romance Writers of America, just 2,000 are published, meaning that many writers dream up romances essentially for blogs, Web sites (such as elloras
cave.com/), zines (such as Montreal’s Lickety Split), fan fiction sites (such as fanfic.net/), themselves—or their partners. Even if you start out writing for yourself, Warren said, the lure of publishing is strong. The romantic genre—which focuses on the initial attraction between a man and a woman, overcoming some kind of challenge, and almost always, a happy ending—was worth about $1.37 billion across North America in 2006, according to the RWA.

“There’s a lot of scary realities in the world,” Warren told the Straight in a phone conversation from North Vancouver, noting that taste in romance has slid away from the thin, traditional story line toward the erotic, the paranormal, vampire stories, and big family epics. “People want to go back to something safe,” she said.

Despite the books’ popularity, romance still flummoxes academics. In her book Empowerment Versus Oppression: Twenty First Century Views of Popular Romance Novels (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), editor Sally Goade starts by asking: “Are women readers (and writers) oppressed by their commitment to a narrative with an essentially patriarchal, heterosexual relationship at its centre, or are they somehow empowered by their ability to create, escape to, and transform the narrative into a vehicle for reimagining women’s freedom within relationships?”

The book’s authors examine, among other things, the industry’s troubling dependence on formula, the lack of interracial relationships, and feminism’s funny relationship with the genre.

If that stuff is problematic, it’s easily fixed by a writer. But what about the greater problem of the lack of
local romance, generally? Is Vancouver romantic?

“I think that depends on the people,” Lyons said, and then she sighed. “There’s a stereotype that Canadian men are not romantic—that if you write a Canadian hero, there’s no spark, no edge. But I think Canadian men do just fine. We have tremendous romantic opportunities in Vancouver, from the great restaurants for candlelit dinner settings to the outdoors.”

So whether you’re single, enjoying the first blush of a new romance, or romantically near-comatose in a long-term relationship, Lyons and Warren suggest the most compelling sex toy this Valentine’s Day is a pen.