Creating Writing Spaces for Queer Romance Authors

After a less-than-ideal experience with a couple writing groups, I became extremely skeptical of them. Additionally, my first manuscript—completed during the 2023 Camp NaNoWriMo event—had developmental editing issues so big, you could drive a life-size Tonka truck through them. As a result, I shelved the manuscript permanently. My dream of publishing queer romance joined it.

Imagine my surprise when Sam Kier and Dayna Reidenouer, fellow members of the LGBTQ+ Editors Association , made a pretty big announcement (to me) in our organization's Slack channel in early January.

Registration was open for a six-week Queer Romance Writers Group workshop. Each session would entail two twenty-minute writing sprints using prompts. The sprints would be followed by a quick lesson on a fiction storytelling principle as it directly applied to queer representation in the queer romance genre.

Since that time, our little group has held three back-to-back "workshops." Truthfully, it's become less of a workshop and more of a queer romance writers' cohort. Now that we're on a break for the summer, it got me thinking.

Why aren't there more opportunities where queer authors writing queer romance can come together? To learn, to write, and to network or socialize all at once?

John Peragine of Writer's Digest indeed calls for something like this for writers in general.

It is my belief that we need to connect with other writers to provide a network of support, friendship, context to our work, and mutual understanding. Who knows better what a writer goes through daily than another writer?

I have a few ideas on how writing spaces for queer romance authors can become a reality for more authors like me and my group.

Queer Romance Writing Workshops

Okay, yes, this one seems pretty obvious. However, from experience through previous writing critique groups, it can be awkward sharing excerpts from your story in an environment where you are the only queer author.

Sure, fiction storytelling principles are generally the same when applied. However, even workshops for romance authors tend to be geared toward cisgendered, heterosexual pairings. Queer representation is treated as an aside, where queer characters are merely stand-in characters or caricatures.

Queer romance writing workshops, like the one I'm a part of, would be led by an experienced writing instructor, coach, or published author(s). Participants would have a chance not only to experiment with fundamental storytelling principles through prompts. Every other session would also be used as a critique session of a member's current work-in-progress.

This type of specific workshop allows queer authors across romance subgenres to come together in a space where, ironically enough, it becomes less about the romance and more about the realistic portrayal of queer relationships, warts and all. Fantasy, crime thrillers, various romantic suspense thrillers, or even cozy mysteries would have a place at the authorial table.

Queer Romance Author Mentoring Office Hours

I'm admittedly borrowing this idea from the LGBTQ+ Editors Association. Professors across the world regularly hold office hours. This is a time for students to drop in during a set time frame for a free-for-all Q&A session.

For queer romance authors, this would be a time to ask questions about the genre as a whole, the expectations readers have for it and what they generally dislike in it, and writing-specific stumbling blocks. To create a sense of writer/mentor intimacy, the event would have limited spots to guarantee equal time among participants.

The office hours would be hosted by volunteer mentors, guest authors or publishing experts, or queer romance editors well-versed in a Q&A panel presentation format. Gale Massey (also of Writer's Digest) says, "Anytime you do something for another writer, you are building goodwill and increasing your own knowledge of the craft and industry."

These events, then, would additionally create the camaraderie that, "Yes. I've been there. I see you. I hear you. Let's brainstorm this together."

Queer Romance Writing Virtual Mini-Conference

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, video conferencing software usage has skyrocketed. In-person events aren't quite a thing of the past, no, but for some of us, virtual networking has been a game-changer.

This virtual mini-conference would serve as a place for both newbie and experienced queer romance authors to get their feet wet in the publishing world. It would be a one-day conference with no more than three or four 45-minute presentations. The presentations would include subjects like

• Storytelling principles as they apply to queer romance.
• Traditional vs. self-publishing in the queer romance arena.
• Marketing oneself as a queer author writing queer romance.

One of my favorite conference experiences happened in February. The Neurodivergent Publishing Conference was created by and for neurodivergent folx with the goal to

create a neurodivergent space in the publishing world, discuss the unique challenges and triumphs of neurodivergent people, and to discuss tools, solutions, and options that exist for neurodivergent members of the publishing community.

I'm of the mindset that a similar mini-conference could be organized by and for queer folx as well. ????♀? (Seriously, if you're interested in this concept, email me. Let's start brainstorming something for 2025!)

I currently have 25 unread queer romance novels on my e-reader. (Don't ask how long ago I bought them; that's between me and e-reader store.) I love knowing that this genre has such a solid foothold in the contemporary romance genre.

What I want to see more of and what I try to support across all platforms I'm on, is queer romance written by queer authors. The learning spaces I mentioned above, and many others that haven't been thought up yet, are just the starting point of how we get there.

Shannon Scott is the founder and owner of Sage Editing. Obsessed with getting in on the ground floor of story creation, and balancing that with a hyperfixation on the power and effects of language on the human experience, Shannon is a fiction story coach and fiction developmental editor specializing in queer romance.

(P.S. Shannon’s not really a person. Shannon is a honey badger and two pandas in a trench coat faking her way through life. During the day, she purports to be a fiction story coach and fiction developmental editor with a hyperfixation on the power of language on the human experience. At night, she tears through books and e-puzzles like a fiend. Sometimes she even throws words together on a page, with the hope that they make sense to someone other than her.)