Lover boy ... Pablo Neruda with his wife Delia. Photograph: Neil Libbert/Corbis

Joanna Trollope made the point on this blog recently that everyone knows that so-called "chick lit" is not just for girls. "We know men read these books," she said, and it's true.

But not only do we men read these books (Kinsella, Colgan, Jewell et al) but we also write them too. Along with writers like Tony Parsons, Nick Hornby (to a degree, although I'm pretty sure he'll hate that label) Matt Dunn and John O'Farrell, I have been writing chick lit - or at least its male counterpart Lad Lit - now for the best part of a decade and I love it.

Obviously I don't love the label itself (both the male and the female labels create instant images in my minds of young urbanites drinking too much and then throwing up over their shoes). But as for the content goes I genuinely think you'd be hard pressed to come up with a more affable and immediately enjoyable genre than ... not Chick Lit ... or Lad Lit ... but Pop Lit.

Pop Lit, that's it. That's what I write. It's just like pop music in as much as it's immediately accessible (and danceable and hum-able if you like) yet touching on all the great themes of life (love, laughter, hatred and jealousy) without feeling the need to take itself too seriously. If you want a clearer image think of "Creep" era Radiohead: all that angst and self loathing wrapped around a great pop tune with a killer hook. Now that's exactly what Pop Lit is.

And what of Radiohead's post The Bends output? Albums like Kid A (where they so desperately don't want to be "pop" that they dispense with any semblance of a tune in a bid to become Aphex Twin). Well that, to my mind, would be the musical version of the literary novel: overly long, at times hard going and so completely and utterly drenched in chin-strokery it's a wonder Thom Yorke's beard hasn't caught fire.

But to get back to my point (and yes, I did have one) men writing about love and relationships under the banner of Pop Lit is nothing to be ashamed of. In fact men writing about relationships to a great degree makes more sense than women writing about it. Think about it. How many of the world's greatest love letters, poems and (yes) pop songs have been written by men? Have you read Napoleon's letters to Joséphine de Beauharnais? It's impossible not to be moved by them. Have you read Pablo Neruda's love poetry? It's more than enough to reduce your average Andy McNabb reader to tears. Have you heard How Can You Mend A Broken Heart? (The Green version or the Gibb version, it matters not.) I defy you to listen to the lyrics and not find yourself having a small moment. What I'm trying to say is that it's a complete fallacy to say that men neither care or are interested in matters of the heart when we quite clearly are and have been for some time and it's because of men like Neruda, Gibb and Bonaparte being prepared to wear their hearts on their sleeves that I am proud to say that I write Chick Lit ... no ... Lad Lit ... no ... Pop Lit.

And long may the tradition continue.

• Mike Gayle's Wish You Were Here is published by Hodder in paperback on July 10