Jane Austen’s first novel, Sense & Sensibility, was published as being written by A Lady. Her next book, arguably her most popular, Pride & Prejudice was attributed to The Author of Sense & Sensibility. During her time, reading novels was considered to be the height of impropriety–only people of loose morals read novels openly (everyone else hid the fact they read them), so heaven forbid one should admit to writing them! Austen made fun of this in her novel Northanger Abbey.

In this day and age, “writing fiction” isn’t as looked down upon as it was 200 years ago… unless you happen to write genre fiction such as romance, science fiction/fantasy, mystery, thriller/horror, etc. — basically the genres covered by the term “Popular Fiction.” The genres which easily conjure stereotypes: Romance = bodice rippers with a picture of Fabio on the front. SciFi = novelizations of the Star Trek TV show. Mystery = the staid, quiet brainteasers of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Horror = “Oh, you mean like Friday the 13th?” and so on. The genres taught in the Master of Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University.

Amongst the 80 or so students in the program, we each have our own prejudices for or against certain genres. But it’s still a “safe” place for authors of popular fiction to receive encouragement and understanding of our work. In the last couple of days, there has been a discussion on our web forum about a blog entry from someone at the SHU admissions department using stereotypes to describe each of the genres. No one is happy about it, and with good reason, as the school’s website is one of the main recruiting tools for our small, unique program.

While I don’t like romance being associated with only the image of Fabio, I tend to be a little more philosophical about it. No, it’s not good that this was posted on the school’s website, and I’m pleased that the head of the program has gotten involved in the issue. However, I also know from experience what kinds of prejudice and stereotypes every single one of the students in this program will face once they leave the “secure” environment of school.

As an author of Inspirational Romance, I have had my fill of trying to explain how Romance can be written with a Christian worldview. Now that I’m writing something set in the regency era, it’s a lot easier to compare it to Jane Austen’s novels. But I still get the odd expressions, the questions (“but how can it be a romance novel with no sex in it?”), and the wink-wink-nudge-nudge.

What keeps coming back to me, though, is that none of the jokes, the stereotypes, the misinformation, the wink-wink-nudge-nudge, the horrible criticism I received a long time ago when I was majoring in a “traditional” creative writing program–nothing has kept me from writing Inspirational Romance. But I have to wonder…if I’d never found American Christian Fiction Writers (which was American Christian Romance Writers when I joined in 2001) and if I’d never learned of the WPF program at Seton Hill, would I be nearing the point where I’ll be sending my synopsis + 3 chapters + series proposal off to a literary agent?

If Jane Austen’s first two books hadn’t been met with critical acclaim, would we ever know they were written by Jane Austen and not A Lady? She didn’t pay attention to the prejudices against novel writing 200 years ago, and the world is a much better place for it. So I intend to follow her example, not listen to those who would discourage me with their winks and nudges or innuendos, and pursue the stories God has put in my heart.