Politics & Power Quote by Nora Roberts

There is a quietly radical pragmatism in Nora Roberts praising a writers group by name. No mystique, no lone-genius mythology, no coy talk about “the muse” - just infrastructure. In a literary culture that still loves to pretend art happens in splendid isolation, Roberts points to the unglamorous machinery that actually builds careers: support, information, networking. Those three nouns read like a checklist for professional survival, especially in a genre long treated as a guilty pleasure rather than a serious field.

The specific intent is promotional, sure, but it’s also corrective. Roberts is defending romance writers as workers in an industry, not merely dreamers with notebooks. The subtext is about legitimacy: Romance Writers of America becomes a credentialing ecosystem, a place where craft meets commerce and where knowledge is circulated laterally, not handed down by gatekeepers who have historically undervalued women’s readership and women’s labor. Saying “I believe strongly” is a tell; she’s pushing back against an old insult that romance doesn’t require skill or strategy.

Context matters: Roberts is not an aspirant; she’s a brand, a bestseller, a living institution. When someone at her level endorses community, it’s a signal that networking isn’t a dirty word - it’s how you learn markets, negotiate contracts, find editors, swap intel about scams, and stay psychologically intact. The line reads like mentorship stripped of sentimentality: success is communal, and professionalism is a genre’s defense against condescension.