Robin | August 4th, 2008
I know there’s going to be a lot of RWA talk this week, and I can’t wait to hear the different perspectives on the magnificent chaos that inhabited the San Francisco Marriott this past week. Despite the persistent debates over who should and shouldn’t attend the conference, the fact that so many different representatives of the genre and the industry attend the conference is a revelation of how intertwined the online community has become.
Most of the time I believe that everything I write is projected out into some foggy ether that a few people happen to stumble into. I am still surprised when people comment on my reviews or columns. Maybe it’s that way for everyone, but it tends to make me feel like more of a bystander than a central player. Which, as someone who is very outspoken, might seem a bit paradoxical. But it’s a function, I think, of the ever-fluctuating boundaries of the online genre community. Intellectually I know that this really is an ongoing conversation among a very diverse collection of voices. A conversation that, despite all the scandals and dramas, creates and reflects a profoundly symbiotic relationship among all of its participants.
But emotionally it sometimes feels like a complex negotiation of rival gangs, with the threat of ostracism and/or retaliation for crossing a boundary you didn’t even know existed. I understand why people feel that it’s too dangerous to get involved, even though I believe that these conversations are important, crucial even, to the process of building and maintaining the public realm of genre Romance. That no matter how insignificant we might think some issues, no matter how annoying we might find certain reviews, no matter how hotly we debate the wisdom of critical attention to Romance, we’re all already engaged in the process of building and maintaining a common infrastructure in which everything we do and say matters.
It matters in part, of course, because we’ve all been brought together through a shared love of reading, and more particularly of reading Romance. But even beyond that, I think it all matters because what is being created over and over again, through books, blogs, messageboards, websites, and the like, is what free speech dorks like me call a “marketplace of ideas,” which is basically a fancy way of describing a public space in which people exchange views on the things that matter to them. Because books matter to us, reading matters to us, and ultimately, sharing that experience matters to us. Romance holds some of our most profound values — love, forgiveness, redemption, integrity, happiness, and justice – at its center, so it’s no surprise that it should invoke passionate reactions. It concerns the creation of a more perfect union, so to speak, through the love match of the central couple, so why should we be surprised that it brings so many people together. Whether we like it or not, whether we’re in concert with our views or not, everyone reading and participating in this online experience already comprises a community. All that remains for us is to define and refine our community experience.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I’d like to see more of in this community, and my primary wish is for more active disagreement. Not screaming and yelling, insulting and censoring, but the passionate exchange of differing views, with an equally passionate desire to understand the nature and limits of those differences. Because our differences define us as much as our similarities, and our own views gain significance and depth most powerfully when they are in play with competing ideas. Beyond that, I think that the easier these discussions become, the less animosity will erupt when strongly divergent opinions share the same public space. And ultimately, the more interesting our points of agreement will be, because we will feel empowered to push past any circumstantial disagreements to deeper levels of understanding and conversation. Which, in turn, may actually make reading even more fun.
So what about you? What qualities would you like to see more of in the online Romance community, and what would you like to see us become in five or even ten years?
*note: I have been traveling all weekend and did not realize that I am up on the same day here and at Romancing the Blog. So I have been lazy and have posted the same column here and there.
