Perhaps the hardest part of writing is figuring out where to begin.

It often involves, at least for me, staring aimlessly at the ceiling with some lo-fi beats playlist barely audible in the background or walking for an inordinate amount of time around our campus’ plethora of natural spaces.

As a creative writing student, you’d imagine this process would come naturally, that I would see something or someone, hear something or have a random thought of rare genius appear in my head and I’d be off writing the next Shakespeare.

However, when you’re as immersed in, firstly, the writing world but also what comes afterwards as I am, thoughts of the marketability of your idea, the way a publisher may respond to your submission, or the popularity of what you may hypothetically write, has often led to me abandoning my rogue prose prospects before I’ve even written the first sentence. 

For further context on my pitiful lack of commitment to a single idea for a book, I am a woman who is mostly interested in writing romance (perhaps the most unoriginal sentence I have ever written) with a special focus on LGBTQ+ themes.

My interest in this subject field originated from my time as a young, queer teenager desperate to read about love stories wider than girl meets boy, who fall in love and get married, with whatever moral or ethical dilemma that is introduced by the author to differentiate it from every other romance book on the shelves.

While I was extremely fortunate to find many books such as well-known and well-loved titles like Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston and the graphic novel Heartstopper by Alice Oseman alongside slightly lesser known pieces such as Never Been Kissed by Timothy Janovsky and If This Gets Out by Cale Dietrich and Sophie Gonzales, the one throughline with all of these publications (although they were very enjoyable, low stakes novels) was the fact that they were all about two boys falling in love. 

As aforementioned, I enjoyed these novels immensely, they helped shape what I like to write today, and I can wholeheartedly say I have read all of them more than once.

However, as a woman who is interested in other women: when I searched the shelves for a sapphic story that I could see myself, my feelings and most importantly my love reflected in… the selection was rather lacking.

Now this is not me saying I have never read a WLW, Lesbian or Yuri book before in my life, of course I have.

But I have seen an alarming trend, especially with the most recent explosion of Heated Rivalry in popular media surrounding how most of the individuals who consume LGBTQ+ fiction, actively or passively, seem to only endorse gay books with lesbian stories being pushed to the background or disappearing entirely. 

When conjuring up novels I would personally like to write, when imagining those two main characters who have their souls intertwined in that dizzying and electrifying experience of falling in love, I mostly see two women (what that says about me personally is up for your interpretation).

But more times than not, I stop myself from putting pen to paper.

Why? Because in my head, this imaginary novel has no opportunity to become any kind of bestseller in comparison to if my two main characters suddenly morphed into men. 

I am hopeful, although this rant of sorts may not seem as if I am, that I will one day walk down the road and see a billboard with two women front and centre, their love being broadcasted and celebrated as loudly as the world has been cheering for Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov as of late.

Perhaps, my lack of commitment to actually penning down these WLW love stories is actively contributing to the dismal lack of such novels.

Yet this mental block, which has come from years of observing the love that I wish to witness on page or screen being reduced to background characters or ending in catastrophic heartbreak as every rare series about a Lesbian relationship seems to end with, has made me (somewhat understandably) discouraged. 

I wish I could write without imagining what an imaginary person may think walking past my imaginary novel on the shelf before picking up the MLM one placed beside it.

I wish I could have some faith in the wider community outside of Lesbians and supportive, sapphic-loving allies to read what I wish to share with the world.

I wish I could write with the confidence that the kind of love I am portraying isn’t seen as lesser or not as palatable to the wider market. 

We have made such strides in general when it comes to the production and consumption of LGBTQ+ media and how it has bled from just within our community into the wider public.

I have been so proud and excited to see books that I love and cherish being celebrated by such a variety of people when I can remember a time where stories such as these were always put on the backburner and almost exclusively traded within the community.

I just want, even if I sound like a broken record at this point, to write and subsequently see the love that so many experience, reflected and celebrated alongside the gay love stories that have made it mainstream.  

I think we can get there… or rather I hope that we can. 

Image credit: Isabelle Kinch