Chick lit is so last millenia

Being the veritable novel n00b that I am, I had floundered when first asked what genre of romance I write (“Er… funny?”), and then hungrily fell upon the all-embracing “Chick Lit” category like a policeman with a Krispy Kreme doughnut.

It was what I was told I write, after an experienced writer read my first 15 chapters of now-dead-Draft-Two. Mostly because I was told that the romantic bits were practically incidental, since much of the book revolved around the plot.

Right.

So I started introducing myself for a little while there as “an aspiring chick lit writer”. I told myself that, with enough practice, I’d eventually be able to say all that about myself without needing to squelch the huge desire to giggle.

Well. Someone at my writers’ group threw that one out the window quick smart today, when she curtly pointed out that Chick Lit is kinda passé. “You write Women’s Literature,” I was told quietly this evening, taken aside like a small child that had just loudly asked her mother why boys don’t have vaginas. “Just say, ‘Women’s Literature’. You get a lot more respect for the genre that way.”

Alrighty then. Women’s literature it is. It sounds a little like what the suffragettes might have given out back in the day, or even a gentle euphemism for a pamphlet about thrush, but hey. What do I know.