It’s Just Story – Don’t Label It Anything Else

Leading up to and following WorldCon, there was lots of discussion about genre mashup, new genre, new pulp, existential pulp, new adult, new weird, new Y.A. – just new, new new.

Discussions here, here, here, and here (with more here), made me think that I’m one of those writers that struggles because I don’t fit neatly into a box. Okay, I can hear an evil fey in my ear channeling Nick Mamatas throw a snappy response back about fitting into the “not published enough” or “not good enough” box…but that’s just that constant author’s shadow of self-doubt creating external villains. (For the record, I have much respect for Mr. Mamatas, and have great appreciation for his work, as well as his fiery honesty. Why his face is on the evil fey whispering in my ear…well, that’s just an author’s imagination.)

But, the bottom line is that most writers I know, including myself, just want to write what we write. We don’t want to fit into little boxes. The marketing professional inside of me says, well, sorry, kiddo you have to have labels so that the bookstores know where to shelve your product (book). This whole belief that consumers (readers) only read from a certain shelf is very limited. Are there customers like that? Sure, there is; but, the fact is that most readers read everything. They will read a mystery, they’ll read a collection of short stories, they’ll read science fiction and fantasy; they’ll even read literary fiction. What’s my evidence of this? My book shelves, the book shelves of my friends and family, what I see my community members reading in the library, and it seems some folks in the industry (especially the library side of the house) tend to agree. Oh, and don’t forget the internet – the internet’s bookshelves are endless, as the affable Chuck Wendig pointed out.

However, even when common sense prevails, there is a clear problem with the industry. I say this because I’m seeing such statements from authors trying to thrash themselves away from confining genre labeling and what the industry seemingly expects of them. Writers like Caitlin R. Kiernan or Myke Cole have to communicate – via blogs, interviews, panels at conventions, etc. – that they are only going to write one way until they are taken serious as a science fiction writer (Kiernan), or that men can write romance (Cole) in order to throw off the chains of genre or author branding. I see a problem when people say William Gibson is defeating his author branding by writing historical fiction as opposed to cyberpunk.  Hell, eventually, even the almighty J.K. Rowling has to write something else. Whereas other authors like Harlan Ellison,  Neal Stephenson,  Dan Simmons, and Jean Johnson write in multiple genres with relative ease and no one tries to clamp them down to one genre shelf. Even classics like Orwell and Adams wrote in multiple genres. Of course, then there are folks who seem to have their own genre, like China Miéville or Neil Gaiman. Other times, some folks just bend the language to make being trapped in a genre something good:  Be a specialist, they say. I say Bollocks! to the spin doctoring. Write what you want. If the story is good, it will sell.

Over the years I’ve written everything from non-fiction, fiction, creative non-fiction, and from horror to literary fiction. When I sit down to write a story the first thing on the forefront of my mind is not what genre it is.  I’m writing to tell the story that must be told. It is as simple as that. Nothing more. My protagonists certainly don’t whisper in my ear and say, “I must be on the hard-case crime shelf,” or ‘Hey, you, writer, you better make sure that I end up on the same shelf as Cronin, King, Neville, or Straub.” No, they grab the writer (me) and say, “Tell my story and let the world know.”

I may be being too metaphorical here; however, I despise when I read something that is just rehashed formula made to just sell and not stimulate (I will refrain from naming names, but many of them are sold at Wal-Mart check-out stands or liquidated via Costco). I bore of stories like that. I want to see the writer challenge me – both of us going out of our comfort zone. I seem to be quoting Kiernan a lot lately, but she’s got a fucking good point:  “I am not here to write stories that make you feel good about yourselves.”  Both as a reader and a writer, that’s not what I look for from my literature. Make me think. Make me feel. And for goodness sake, don’t coddle me. If I liked your science fiction story, I’m probably going to dig your historical fiction. If I liked your graphic novel, I’m likely going to dig your young adult project, too. I don’t want my authors to type-cast themselves; I certainly don’t want them to pigeonhole me as a reader.

Given that, I don’t expect anyone to do that to me either. Fuck the genre police. Write your story and don’t let the bookshelf labels hold the pen.

*Writer’s Note:  Thanks to the Twitter-verse for helping my frontal lobe connect more examples for my arguments here. @impropaganda and @chriswhitewrite were especially on point.

 


Comments

4 responses to “It’s Just Story – Don’t Label It Anything Else”

  1. I hear you. It’s the reason I ended up going indie. Too many agents told me my story needed to be less “strange.”

    1. Bring on the strange. So much of the publishing industry seems so frakking arbitrary.

  2. 1 – I am not evil and I don’t think anyone could accuse me of whispering! 😉

    2 – things like this are just ridiculous. It happens in tv too. When Sci-Fi was running the Dresden Files tv show, which was a break-away hit for them, they actually lost out on it for a 2nd season b/c they didn’t know how to market/classify it and by the time they got their act together all of the actors had signed on to other shows. They just waited too long. And I see this sort of thing happening in the publishing industry too.

    You’re supposed to design the marketing around the product, not the other way around.

    As a writer, this is obnoxious, but limiting yourself isn’t the answer either. I will write whatever story it is that needs to get out of my head, sci-fi, mystery, fantasy, cyberpunk, urban horror, whatever. And if those genres intersect, so what? As long as it’s a well crafted tale, then a good publisher will know how to get it out there.

  3. You are preaching to the choir here. I am always amazed at how “the industry” feels a need to label absolutely everything. Of course what is even more astonishing to me is how many people take the story and make it all about some “statement” the artist is trying to make. Like no artist ever thought of doing something just because they thought it may be good, pretty, or just entertaining.

    All the more reason to indie publish.

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