kate clayborn

thank you so much!!! 🩷

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Kate writes about the "cumulative sentence" in detail here and how it's used in romance novels and lands in this beautiful place about the impact of this sentence specifically in romance novels. Man, Kate can just write.

oh man thank you so much ❤️

thank you so so much 🖤

I was absolutely delighted by this newsletter - to learn there is a name for something I do all the time in my writing, to understand better why it works, is so helpful.

thank you so much 🖤

thank you for reading! ❤️

thank you so much 🖤

I finished my book! so of course I want to talk about syntax

i know i neglect this platform a lot but for those of you who may have been missing my musings on romance prose here’s a little something 🖤https://kateclayborn.substack.com/p/i-finished-my-book

(im tryna get better about posting in two places, not always successful, v sorry)

but then i’ll say to myself, self, you’re overthinking it; just keep going! well guess what! i’m never overthinking it when i have that instinct! i’m *feeling* it! as a romance writer i should know to recognize that as essential

many years in and sometimes i still don’t always trust my most solid writerly instincts, especially when i am too focused on something like a word count. i’ll write a transition into something in the story and i have an actual feeling in my body: this isn’t right.

i keep telling myself i’m gonna do that and then forget every time 😩

thank you so much ❤️

i bet a lot of those ideas touch each other (not in a romance way alas)

(btw i do think it’s possible to make meaningful observations about this network while you’re living in it—i just mean that it’s challenging to see it all at scale without the benefit of time/distance. let’s hope we get the opportunity to have that)

genre fiction is so illuminating in this regard in part because of volume and pace of production and innovation, and the romance genre in particular has been nimble in these ways (“nimble” does not equal progressive, let me be *real* clear on that)

some of the best literary criticism ever written has been mindful—maybe even obsessive—about this idea of network, about tracing all the ways a text or set of texts is touched by all sorts of things at the same time. politics, tech, religion, identity, economics, geography, climate, whatever

i say “in time” because i think it’s challenging to be inside one of these networks and see a very layered movement in literary history clearly—but i genuinely hope people who take genre seriously will study this period

i write contemporary romance so i want to be careful not to talk about this in a way that’s unwelcome from an author, but i do think that in time, there will probably be a lot to say about the network of influences that brought genre romance to where it is today

do u want to dissociate? if so then yes

tbh hot frosty was a good time

man i need some tips! i’ve really struggled to get one of these to thrive in my house

i’ll tell u one thing romance books taught me! that a day of foibles like the one i had would conclude with a much more handsome stranger!!! (no offense to v handsome mr c but u are not a stranger)

HEY. THIS IS MY FAVORITE AUDIOBOOK OF YOURS.

she’ll write a sentence that will destroy your life