Wednesday, September 14, 2005

What’s Your Genre? Say it Loud, Say it Proud!

People have the need to label and pigeonhole each other, and in the writing world that holds especially true. Even here at Blogit, we’re cast into our specific genres. That’s not a bad thing; it helps keep everyone organized so it’s easier to identify what we want to read. It’s how we find books in the bookstores and in the libraries and on Amazon.com.

But it puts a lot of pressure on the writer, what should we focus on and which slot to place ourselves. What’s the best genre to write in.

If you’re like me, you don’t like pigeonholes. You like the freedom to write whatever the hell you please as the mood strikes. That attitude doesn’t suit publishers and marketers, however, so sometimes we’re forced to make a decision.

When someone asked me the other day in which genre I write, I wasn’t sure what to tell them. My typical answer is a broad one. (Well, my typical answers for just about anything tend to be broad, but that’s another issue, entirely!)

I used to write literary short stories. I cut my teeth on literary reading, and literary mimicking, and after a good fifteen years or so, I had to admit I’m not good at literary. Maybe I haven’t lived enough. Maybe I’m not emotionally mature enough. Maybe I simply lack the talent to create something interesting and meaningful out of the dull and lackluster.

But about two years ago, a change within my writing took place. I became less concerned about making myself fit that literary mold, and started letting loose a little. Romantic elements crept into my work.

I was accused of sounding too Harelquinesque by members of my critique group. I thought that ironic, since I’d read precious few Harlequins in my time, and the last one was while studying for my Chaucer final in college twelve years ago. (You’d need some light reading, too, after finishing that class!)

I started writing a horror story at the same time I started getting comments that my other stories were sounding like romance novels. I didn’t knee-jerk and say, “Hmm, I think I’m going to write a horror story, today.” No, the idea came as a single image garnered by a line in a song I’d heard on the radio. I believe the song was about war, but my mind took it elsewhere. I sat down and, over a period of six months, pieced together my longest short story ever, which evolved all on its own without help from me. I simply channeled it.

I was offended by the Harlequin comments, but the more I thought about it, the less concerned I was that my stories contained romantic elements. If I were to be honest with myself I would have to admit that I like romance.

This was difficult to achieve, because I’d grown up rather snobby about what I read. Part of it was influence from other snobs. Part of it was coming into adulthood as a graduated English major. Part of it was simply that I had interests in other genres and couldn’t be bother with such fluff. When I considered what I had been reading when I’d scorned Romance novels the most vehemently, however, I was humbled. Who was I to condemn Romance as a genre, when I read such schrott as Fantasy, Horror and some SciFi thrown in for good measure???

So, after finally opening up to the possibilities, I decided I would read romance novels, and try to write one, too. And I’m glad I did. I’m having a ball reading all I can get my hands on, and learning about the craft.

But that still doesn’t mean I’ve managed to find a niche.

Because of its particular structure, I’m also using the romance genre to help me learn the craft of writing a novel. Even though I am currently settled in Romance, and have an idea for a second book within this genre, I also have ideas of several other books.

Those stories may or may not fit into the Romance genre, depending on how the wind blows when I start writing each one. Most of them, however, are historicals. And all contain romantic elements.

I don’t recommend pigeonholing yourself in any one genre, unless you have a great gift for one single thing and possess no interest exploring other coops. But the next time someone asks you, “What’s your genre,” be honest. Tell them what you’re working on now, and leave it at that. Hold true to what’s in your heart. Write whatever you feel like writing…

Without exception, without apology.

Uh oh. It's that time of year again. I've signed up. Have you?

Well, I did it. Last week, I got my reminder notice in my e-mail, and I signed up for NaNoWriMo this year. For those of you who are not familiar with it, NaNoWriMo is an acronym for National Novel Writing Month.

What happens, is a bunch of crazies like us already-prolific bloggers sign up for this event, and during the month of November, we labor, sweat, keep bizarre waking hours, and tear our hair out trying to meet the prescribed deadline of writing 50,000 words in one month.

For a typical genre novel, that’s exactly half of a book, or two hundred pages of specially formatted manuscript pages. Word counts are done on the honor system, and they do have a way of counting the words you submit at the end of the month, if you claim you’ve met the 50,000 mark. They respect your privacy, and offer simple suggestions for encrypting your work, if you feel the need to do so—which is basically unneccesary.

But they trust you to be honest, and that what you submit is actually what you’ve written in November ONLY, and NOT including what you’ve written UP TO November.

The reward is more personal than it is anything else. You get a free T-shirt if you are a winner, and there are as many winners as there are people who succeed in writing 50,000 words. There are probably one or two other little advantages, like getting your name displayed somewhere on their website. But like I said, it’s really the personal reward of achieving a difficult goal that really drives people.

This event has been around for a few years now, but I didn’t learn about it until last year when someone people on a writing list had mentioned it in passing. Curious, I looked it up and decided to give it a try.

For those of us with full lives, writing 50,000 words in a month is a difficult task. I got up at 5:00 am every morning, enduring my husband’s ruffled feathers from my having invaded his personal pre-work solitude. But most mornings, I managed to drag my sorry ass out of bed, brew a pot of coffee, don my headphones and played my writing music via my Real Player.
I wrote a lot. I wrote more in one month than I ever had before. I’m a slow writer, you see. A procrastinator, a thinker, a muller. But last November, I really cranked. In those four weeks, I spewed forth 25,000 words, one quarter of my “new” novel. I was very proud of myself. I didn’t win the prize, but I surpassed my expectations, and set a new record for myself.

Unfortunately, due to burnout, life circumstance, what have you, I haven’t added to that word count, since. My romance is still languishing, begging to be fleshed out beyond the critical plot work I dedicated to it this summer. It's had a nice long vacation, and it's long overdue to get back to work.

So, when I signed up again on Friday, I thought I’d probably continue where I left off. Maybe this time, I’d meet the goal, and the hardest part of any novel, the middle, will have been completed. I just want to get this particular book out of the way, simply so I can say, I DID IT! I FINISHED A NOVEL!

But something happened to change all that.

Yesterday, my husband took our son for a father-son jog/hike a little ways down the road. He came back with an interesting piece of history to which we later found only a single sparse reference to on the Internet.

You see, back in the early 19th century, a local woman was killed on her way home from market. The few details he brought home (if you don't mind, I'll just keep that info between me and my greedy little writer's heart) made me wonder aloud if the place where this happened was haunted.

And then I said, That would make a good premise for a ghost story. And then I remembered a premise for another ghost story that’s been bubbling on the back burner for maybe the last ten years. And then I thought, Holy mackerel, I could combine them!

And then I thought, Maybe, just maybe, I’ll be starting a new novel when NaNoWriMo launches this year. That tired old romance can wait. I’ve got a good solid outline of the plot and can return to it another time, and lose nothing since it’s already lost momentum.

But this new story, well, really intrigues me, and I get excited thinking about it. It would be nice to use NaNoWriMo to get a big start on it, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll get more than 25,000 words out of it, this year.

And maybe, just maybe, I'll have enough momentum left over at the end of November to finish it, too.

Time will tell...