Perils of the Writer: Deep in the Genre

Not to get all Goodfellas on you, but for as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a genre writer.

It's funny, because the idea of writing sci-fi or fantasy has always been in me, long before I was really reading it.  I have a hard time pointing to influences, because by the time I was seriously reading in the genre, I had a picture in my head of what I wanted it to be.

Of course, writing genre comes with a huge set of baggage.  

I still remember in my college Creative Writing class the comments that started, "Well, this is fantasy, and fantasy is junk, but given that..."    Even with Fantasy  being more mainstream, it's still got a ways to go, at least in perception.  Not too long ago, I read an article* which declared the genre "stale", though it was clear that the author only had the most cursory familiarity with the genre.  

Fortunately, the baggage is not as heavy as it used to be.  Sure, there will be a crowd that thinks it's not "real" writing, or "real" literature, or something, but I think the uphill battle for legitimacy has largely been won.  The general public might not know the deep cuts in the SFF literature, but they they know that it's out there, and it's no longer in the darkened corner of shame of the Waldenbooks.

That is, if there were still a Waldenbooks, but that's a different story.  

But it's not entirely gone.  Just the other day I was introduced to a writer, and when I said I had three novels out and fourth coming soon, I got nods of approval... but once I described my books, I got that look.

I can take that look, though.  Because I'm doing what I love.  I'm doing what I've always wanted to do.

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Only one week remaining to sign up for the ArmadilloCon Writers' Workshop!  If you're in the Austin area-- or can get there with minimal trouble-- it's very worth your while.  

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*- I'm not going to link it, it does not deserve the traffic.

The Art of Mixing Genres

Let me begin by saying...

Moving sucks.

The stress and anticipation and scheduling = $$ massage appointments.
The packing of all your stuff = $$ boxes from Uline and free old newspapers from local paper.
Soap to often wash newsprint from your hands = $1.28
Moving truck/gas = $200
Loading truck with 2 helpers = hours + helpers dinner
Unloading truck with 1 helper = fewer hours + dinner for two
Unpacking all your stuff and finding the right place for it = another $1.28 for soap, and WEEKS.

Driving that 20 foot truck and backing that big bitch into both old and new driveways perfect on the first try = PRICELESS!!!!

Seriously, not ALL of it sucks, though.

The prospects of a new phase of life, the adventure in a new place and new people to meet, remembering why you kept this or that, and deciding some of that shit doesn't mean anything and can be trashed... it's also priceless because it reminds you of parts of yourself you might have forgotten and shows you how other parts of you have grown.

And since the big-truck moving stuff was done Tuesday of last week, that is my excuse for completely flaking out last week and not posting a single word. No thought of it even occurred to me. Brain no worky. Error. Malfunction. Does not compute.

I prioritized the kitchen and the office, in that order because COFFEE. Things are settling down, and here I am, late, but posting on the topic: Genrefication. How does working within or without the genre spectrum benefit?

My Persephone Alcemdi series was steadfastly categorized in the genre of Urban Fantasy. I agree with this. It was UF. My next novel (announcing soon) will be of a completely different world and characters and it too, will be UF. I have written (unpublished) Epic Fantasy, Space Opera, Poetry, and Mainstream / Fantasy.

That said, Seph and Co. whittled away at mainstream subjects such as losing old friends/making new ones, parenthood, troubled childhoods with troubled parents, loss, jealousy, murder/committing murder, rape, social constructs and politics (in a world of "non-sters" = not quite humans), aging, actions and consequences, dealing with unwanted responsibilities thrust upon you, etc.

To me, the genres are ways of poking around at topics that wouldn't appear in the normal human world alongside topics that would. It adds a layer of depth as well as a layer of separation. Some folks like the 'comfort' of knowing these genre things couldn't be real, while also taking a look at real current issues.

Let me make comparisons via visual art.

Below is my most favorite piece of pen and ink art ever. It is by the awesome Larry Elmore. In it, there are three values: black, gray, and the white of the page. It is perfectly executed and lacks nothing. The emotion conveyed is tender, yet wary. Tanis and Laurana are embracing, but both remain watchful for their world is a dangerous one.
Sometimes, however, you need (or want to play with) more than three shades. The result can be very evocative.

You may find that introducing just a few colors (read as: "aspects of another genre") can heighten the dramatic tension in incredible ways.


But if drawing on the vibrant aspects of another genre create the only possible image that completes your story, DON'T HOLD BACK.

It's YOUR story. Craft it with all the tools you need, and if you have to learn a few new skills along the way, you'll be stronger, more diverse in your skillset, and hey...that can't be a bad thing.

3 Reasons to Write to One Genre & 3 Reasons to Blend Genres

Writing to a specific genre. How does it benefit an author?

Three Reasons to Write to One Genre:

1. Established Framework
Face it, when you're staring at a blank Page One with little more than a glimmer of an idea, anything is possible. Sometimes, "anything" is paralyzing because of the excess of choice.  Aiming for a specific genre can supply guidance for setting, POV(s), number of characters, plot beats, and overall length of the story.

2. Established Publishing & Distribution Markets
If you plan to self-publish, you will need to hire editors and artists who specialize in your genre--specialization makes a notable difference in the end product. Once the product is ready, you need to know the distributors with the most targeted reach among your ideal consumers. If you're squarely in a particular genre, then that information is readily available and accessible.

If you plan to run the gantlet of traditional publishing (of any size), your genre dictates the course you will run. Writing to a specific genre makes that course infinitely easier for you and everyone who has to re-sell your product up the food-chain to get your product to the right market.

3. Established Consumer Market 
We all want sales. Great sales. Enough to buy barrels of wine kind of sales. Regardless of the path to market you took, you still need to sell the books. Thankfully, consumers readily self-identify as fans of specific genres. If you've written a book in their genre--a book that meets the Contract of Expectations between Author and Reader--then you can hop on the sales train that has been built and maintained by all those authors in your genre who came before you. You can tap into the networks of book reviewers, reader conferences, sales catalogs, bundled ad-spots, and more.

Seems like a no-brainer to write to a specific genre right? Not so fast.

Three Reasons to Blend Across Genres:

1. You Want To
2. It's What the Story Needs
3. Your Characters Said You Had To

As I've posted before, I don't know any author who doesn't blend genres. Yes, we need to choose which genre is going to be our primary target audience, but when it comes to sales, we're going to pursue those secondary genre markets too.

Barrels of wine are at stake.

Blurring The Lines

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: I hate genres. My blog is called Genrefied, because I often feel like whatever I write, it's going to be shoved into one genre or another.

I understand the reasoning and I can even agree with it to a certain extent. fiction and non-fiction should be separated.  I'll even go a little further. Maybe romance should be kept away from hard science fiction.

here's my deal: People go into stores that have been broken into genres, they look in specific sections and they leave. There are exceptions of course. I can almost guarantee that if there is a bargain section, I'm there.

But there is still a lot of bias from a lot of people after they look at THEIR sections.
"Oh. I don't read horror."
"No, I could never read a romance."
"I'm not into mysteries."
"Science Fiction bores me."

Un hunh.

A lot of times when the name Stephen King comes up in a conversation I can actually see the shutters going up inside a person's eyes.

"I don't read Stephen King. He's not my thing."
You mean you don't like horror? or you don't like crime? or you don't like fantasy?
"Any of his stuff."
So you didn't like The Shawshank Redemption?
"The movie? I loved it!
Yeah? How about Stand By Me?
"I that the one with the four boys going to see a body in Labor Day weekend before school starts again? "
Yes. 
"It was great!"
Okay. Now, how about The Green Mile?
"Oh, I cried at that one. it was beautiful."
Stephen King.
"It was not."
Shawshank Redemption was called 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.' It was a novella in his book Different Seasons. So was Stand by Me, but it was called 'The Body.' So was that other movie, about the kid who discovers a Nazi war criminal in his neighborhood. 'Apt Pupil.'
"I didn't like that one as much."
It maybe wasn't quite as good as the others I mentioned, but they are all Stephen King.  

I've actually had variations of that conversation on at least 50 occasions. No, I'm not exaggerating. i worked for 8 years in a place called Media Play that sold books and movies and music and computer games. There was a lot of cross pollination and King was my favorite example of how not to judge a book too quickly. Now and then, people got over their biases and came back and told me how much they enjoyed his books.

A lot of stores moved King over into general fiction a long time ago, because, you know, not exactly one genre for that man.

Currently I'm writing fantasy a lot. Also crime fiction, political thrillers occasionally, got a couple of science fiction pieces out there and a few I'm working on, oh, and straight up horror. Mostly, I mix them as I please. I like blurring the lines.
I am not a round peg. Now and I strictly a square one. I don't easily fit anywhere and I'm okay with that. I write what I want. I read what I want. Sometimes neither can be easily defined.

Some people will tell you that the movie ALIEN is science fiction. I like to counter that it's actually horror with a science fiction motif. Break it down and it's really a story of a monster on a boat. It's just that this time the monster is in outer space.

Write the story you want to write. figure out where it goes afterwards. That's my advice.

And here's a slightly different sample for you: BLOODSTAINED OZ.

One day Christopher Golden looked at me and said, "We should do a story about all of the characters from OZ falling on Kansas, only they've been turned into vampires."

Of course I said yes. Who wouldn't? There are beloved childhood memories, there's depression era Kansas. There are people trying to live their lives and, of course there are vampires. Depending on who you talk to, it's horror, it's comedy, it's action. I say it's all of the above. What it is not, is for the squeamish. Still, we had a helluva lot of fun.  If we had focused on genre, it would have been less fun.

Pros and Cons of Genre Boundaries

I spotted an interesting comment in a review of THE PAGES OF THE MIND. The book came out last Tuesday and it's been doing amazingly well. The best of any of my books so far, in fact. Something I credit to my amazing readers who've really turned out to support this release week.

You all are amazing with posting reviews and talking up this book and series - thank you!

It's even more super cool that the companion novella in FOR CROWN AND KINGDOM, with darling friend Grace Draven, has cracked the Top 1000 on Amazon in the paid Kindle store. Love seeing those fabulous rankings! So does my mortgage company, so there's that, too. :-)

At any rate, a review of THE PAGES OF THE MIND posted just today said:

My goodness its been so long since I read a legit Fantasy Romance. The genre is so small, and its hard to find gems like this one. When I say Fantasy Romance I mean non Paranormal. Since the Twilight craze there are just too many Vampire/Werewolf type romances happening. This book is in a completely different world than our own with its own politics, religions, and lands.Top it all off add in some magic and romance and you've got me hooked.

I saw that just this morning as I was mulling this week's topic: How does working within or outside the genre spectrum benefit or limit? As faithful readers know - my books rarely fall within genre lines. In fact, when I wrote ROGUE'S PAWN, the first of my Covenant of Thorns trilogy, I had no idea it was Fantasy Romance. So, it's kind of amusing to me to have a reviewer call my book "legit Fantasy Romance."

This comes on the heels of a friend who asked me if I had any new Contemporary Fantasy Romance releases later this year for an interview. Which... I don't. My Fantasy Romances are all either "historical," as in they occur in less technological ages than ours, or they're alternate world. Really they're all alternate world, but I'll accept historical. Only that original Covenant of Thorns trilogy counts as Contemporary Fantasy Romance, because part (very small parts) of the storylines in books one and three take place in our contemporary world.

So, those are perfect illustrations right there of how working within a genre can both benefit and limit at the same time. Having my books fit exactly within the Fantasy Romance genre is fantastic and very helpful for conveying what these books are. However, genre boundaries can be so limiting - as much as I'd love to participate in my friend's article, that small addition of "contemporary" leaves my current books out of the running.

But, in the end, does it really matter? For me it's all about the story. I suspect that's true of most of you, too.

Writing Through Tough Times

My late husband with our girls several years prior to his death, instilling a love of books as early as possible!

One evening after work my husband went for a bike ride with his best friend. Ten minutes later the neighbors were at my door to tell me there'd been an accident.

The hardest thing I've ever done, or ever will do, was to sit with my daughters - then ages 3 and 5 - two days later, and tell them their father was gone.

That happened in July many years ago.

Ironically, I'd just gotten back to writing regularly and daily, thanks to my husband's support. We'd known each other since tenth grade, been a couple since our senior year in high school. He was my best friend and biggest booster of me as an author. He really wanted to see me become published and I was seriously at work in the evenings and on the weekends hat year on a science fiction novel that I intended to submit to publishers and agents.

Did I continue to write through the tough times after his death? No, I did not, Widow, single mother, demanding career at NASA/JPL that kept the roof over our heads and food on the table, fixer-upper house we'd bought because he had mad skillz (and I'm hopeless with house repair of any size), huge yard....yeah, no energy or creativity left at night for writing. I still thought about my stories, because they never go away, thank goodness, but no words went on paper. In fact, we have a joke in my family how the characters in that book were left in jeopardy on a temple roof for a LOT of years.

I got back to the actual writing eventually and became a published author. I did major overhauls and revamping on the manuscript I'd been working on when he died, and it became Mission to Mahjundar. (By the way, the new sequel to that, Hostage to the Stars, is coming out in about two weeks!). Dedicating the book to him (and my daughters) was a bittersweet but happy, proud moment.

My creative energy is heavily affected by my health and what's going on in my life, so as I said, if things are dire enough, I don't write. I never stop thinking abut the people, places and plots though.

The Port in the Storm

Everyone and everything alive is subject to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Thank you, Shakespeare. How do you write while navigating whatever slings and arrows have been fired your way? I'd really like to know because I am the acknowledged cosmic empress of losing my footing when life shoots at me.

Maybe the fact that I seem to take it personally is a factor. The thing is we all have our challenges. Migraines are my major stumbling block because when those hit, they hit in waves, and I'll be down for several days in a row. They are electrical storms in the brain - so assuming I can even bear to look at a screen (which is assuming a lot) - nothing cogent can penetrate the random firing pattern of the synapses and the subsequent pain. Boo hoo, poor me, right? That's actually not what this is about - it's to point out that there are things and times in life when writing is 100% the least appropriate thing you can do. Or to recognize that there are times when writing is beyond your grasp, that nothing you do will get you words that day. Or that week. And that's okay.

What's not okay is forcing yourself into someone else's mold. What's not okay is avoiding the writing when physical capability has been restored. You have to come back to the writing and you have to keep coming back.
Emotional hits, stress, chaos, all of those can be written through - and I'd argue SHOULD be written through. Someone once told me that when the shit hit the fan, you can either turn away from your writing, or you can turn toward your writing. Turning toward your writing might mean being vulnerable on the page. It might mean changing where you are in the story so you can channel emotion/conflict/tension/whathaveyou to your characters. It's one of the ways I siphon off intense emotion - I figure out where in my story my character(s) feel the exact same way and I write that scene while the emotion is still fresh in me. Just by virtue of examining how and where I feel stuff lessens its impact. I get freed up. And I take great, spiteful glee in using the messy, painful parts of my life to completely muck up my characters' lives. This makes writing my port in a storm.

What about time? There will be days you don't have time for much of anything. But you have twenty minutes before you sleep - and in that twenty minutes, you huddled in bed with your laptop - you can pour out 750 of the crappiest words on the face of the planet. But you'll have written. You'll end your day on a brief, shining moment of triumph. You'll learn to write in the gaps - the brief snippets of ten minutes here. Fifteen there. And while you might not win any speed awards (gods know I don't) you will eventually amass a book, just by virtue of showing up and persisting no matter what comes.

One last quote that I keep in a file on my computer:
“Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something badly enough. They are there to keep out the other people” Randy Pausch

Whether or not someone writes, regardless of circumstance, really does come down to wanting to write badly enough.*


*Clinical depression or other mental health issues notwithstanding. Those need treating before you can evaluate what you do and don't want.

Getting the Words Down while the Hurricanes Blow

I'm in an incredibly privileged situation.  Not only to I have a fair amount of financial freedom to devote time to my writing, but I'm unburdened by physical or mental ailments.  In the parlance of of the popular metaphor: I've got plenty of spoons.

EVEN STILL I have days where I feel like OH LORD I CANNOT with the writing.  Which is terrible, because I have no excuses.  Well, that's not true: despite my situation, I do have requirements and responsibilities and two to three other people to share a house with*, and am the one handling the various domestic tasks like errands, cooking, laundry, dishes, etc, in addition to elements of our home business.  Some days have special projects, and at the end of those days, the idea of putting my ass in the chair and cranking out some words just makes be want to fall down.

Nonetheless: the writing needs to be done, even on the bad days.  I'm not going to preach some sort of writing perfectionism.  There are days when it doesn't happen.  Usually because I'm just exhausted or have too many other things to get done that day.  And while I do say that if you want to write you have to make it a priority, that's about the long term, not necessarily the day-to-day.

Some days it just doesn't happen, and you shouldn't kick yourself for that. Allow yourself the luxury of a bad day, or a sick day, because it's a long haul.  You can get back on the horse the next day.

But you DO have to get back on the horse the next day.  Do not wallow in your failure. Just accept that you had a bad day and move on.  Because things will go bad in this business.  Things will go bad with you and your day-to-day.  You could slip and break a foot.  You could wake up with a killer case of vertigo.  Your car could be rear-ended by some kids who were skipping school.**  Any of those happen, and your productivity will drop.  But you can't let that stop you.

And speaking of: plenty of work to do.  Quite the long term to-do list on my part.

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Also: Only two weeks left until the submission deadline for the ArmadilloCon Writers' Workshop!  Get in there while you still can.

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*- Depending on if my mother-in-law is in town or not.
**-No, those are just random examples, really.