Writing in One Genre? Why Limit Yourself?

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If you've spent much time at all in the writing blogosphere, you've doubtless run into writers' struggling with balancing the desire to write in multiple genres with what seems like sensible advice to pick one and settle into it while establishing your career.  I've blogged on it multiple times, sometimes referring to the selected genre as a pigeonhole, of all things.  Recently, middle grade author Alex MacKenzie did a guest-spot on the Literary Lab, in which she referred to her writing as as, at a minimum, a two-trick pony; and Michelle Davidson Argyle, author of literary fantasy and literary thrillers, said she felt like she was defying her own good sense.

Very often the gut response by authors and those who support and encourage is, "Why limit yourself?"  Or, more expansively, something along the lines of, "You have so many great ideas, why limit your own creative energy or the experiences of your readers by confining yourself to only one genre?"

I don't intend to give guidance any to any individuals in this post, because I think genre choice is a very personal decision and different authors can and should go about approachingit very differently for themselves.  That said, I would like to respond to this one notion -- "Why limit yourself?"

As you know, I've done just that.

I am an author of psychological suspense and short, character-driven literary fiction -- but my interests are incredibly diverse.  I have not only a general desire to write in other genres, but some specific goals that will never be met without some dabbling in other genres, and a handful of very specific projects ideas in other genres.  But, for now, I have limited myself.

And I'm glad I have -- and not just for marketing reasons.  Forget those.  What I want to suggest to you is that, at least for me, I have gained a lot by limiting myself.  I'll strip away the lengthy examples and cumbersome analogies that I normally work with and just give you the hit list.  Some of this might be obvious, but others I think are a little less so.

• It has given some focus to my reading, so that I am really familiar with the genre of the book I am writing.  This helps me know what techniques are common, what cliches to avoid, what's taken for granted, and what's a little risky.
  
• It has given more focus to my networking.  While I  still meet and get to know authors in other genres, I have made some tremendous contacts specifically within my genre because I'm one of them.

• It has allowed me to really strengthen my writing.  I was a good writer before I chose my genre.  Once I settled into the genre, and my writing brain became more focused, and all my writing projects became centered around that genre and style, my writing has become far stronger and far punchier.

• It has given me a tool set for answering those questions that inevitably come up when you're writing.  "How should I handle this?"  "What's most important here?"  "How do I want to structure this?"  "What should the arc of the pacing be like?"  Oh, right, like psychological suspense.  Because that's what I write.  Simply defining the genre of my book was never as helpful as defining my genre as an author for answering these questions because I could always cop out to, "Well, this is a psychological suspense novel, but I'm just a writer and I have a literary world at my fingertips."

• It has helped me understand specifically how my book does and does not fit into my genre.  I don't have just a general sense of, "It doesn't really fit perfectly into bookstore shelf-genres."  Because I know my genre, I can point to specific elements that fit or or don't, and I can engage in informed conversation about the decisions I made in those regards.

• It has encouraged a general discipline in how I approach writing projects.  The fact that I'm not going to allow myself to jump onto a sci fi project or a fantasy project has removed a great deal of the temptation to hop around or waste my mental energy on projects other than the one I'm trying to finish. Delayed gratification is not bad.

• It has dramatically enhanced my voice.  Part of an author's voice comes from an author's self-identity, and the stronger that self-identity, the stronger and more confident, the more well-developed the authorial voice.

• It has increased the seriousness of my outlook at my writing.  Lots of people are writers.  Lots of people want to write a novel.  Lots of people write stuff.  I was like that for many years.  Even after I decided I wanted to taking my writing seriously, but the day I determined that I'm an author of psychological suspense and short, character-driven literary fiction, it was really serious.

I'll stop there before this gets unwieldy.  Again, my point isn't to convince everyone that they need to pick a single genre.  You don't have to.  But, if you're a career-track writer, and you're conscious of the marketing concerns, of the pressure to establish an identity for yourself at the outset of your career, but your fans and loved ones keep asking you, "Why limit yourself?" -- maybe this will help you see that it's not all bad limiting yourself.

Bones heal best in restrictive casts.  Children develop best with rules and boundaries.  You can't have a reservoir without a dam.  (Okay, so I couldn't stay entirely away from the terrible analogies.)

Limits aren't always bad.

And they aren't forever.

They're for now.

.Nevets.

Soundtrack to writing this post provided by Ronnie Dio, Faith No More, Dokken, Skid Row, and Queensryche.

Winner Announcement!

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We have a winner!

The lucky blog-reader to be selected for this spooky October prize package is...

Clarissa Draper!  Clarissa is a crime writer who recently signed with WiDo publishing for her Evans/Blackwell series of mystery novels.  She shares my loves of both forensics and the craft of writing, and her blog, Listen to the Voices, showcases both, through her publicly-shared critiques of readers' submitted work and through her regular features explaining forensic science to fellow mystery authors.

Now, Clarissa, in your comment on the post you indicated a certain meh-ness to Halloween.  The prizes aren't too Halloween-specific (a ghost story and a Nevetsized something), but if you'd rather forgo those prizes let me know, and I'll hook you up with some sort of consolation prize and pick a new winner.

Otherwise, let me what you'd like by way of a ghost story!  You can leave in the comments here or else e-mail be at c dot n dot nevets at gmail dot com.

The rest of you -- I'm sorry you all couldn't win!  I think you all seemed like you would have had some great fun stories to write.  Don't worry; there will be more opportunities!

In the meantime, if  you haven't heard, sci fi and speculative fiction author Tara Maya has recently released an anthology of previously published stories.  The anthology, Conmergence, has one of my all-time favorite covers, and Tara has always shown a great mixture of intelligence and wit, so I look forward to reading her work.  The print version is not quite ready yet, but the book is available on Kindle, and Tara is celebrating the release with a contest in which she will be giving away a Kindle.

Go check it out!

She is, without a doubt, an intrepid writer!

.Nevets.

Tactless Tuesday Teaser

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I won't be starting Tactless Tuesday again officially until next week, but I thought I'd offer a little brutal honesty on a Tuesday anyway.

Here's the thing that I seem to struggle with most, and that I think a lot of others do, as well: as a writer am I an artist or a businessperson? It seems to me that a lot of us prefer to think of ourselves as artists. It's from this that arises the killer sentiment that I often find myself repeating:

"There just doesn't seem to be a place for stories like the ones I write in the publishing world."

There are a whole lot of problems with that statement, but I want to focus in one aspect of it.

When I say that, as an artist, the implication is that the problem is with the market. After all, I have my integrity to express myself; they should have the integrity to respect that. "Woah is my, no one ones to hear my voice crying from the wilderness, won't any one just give me a chance."

And there's some truth in that. If I just want to write whatever the heck I want to write, maybe show it to some friends, maybe post it on a blog, maybe even print it off at Kinkos and hand it out at the circus -- fine. That's cool. That's artsy and busting with integrity.

But as soon as I want to get published, I'm entering the business realm. I am trying to open up commercial negotiations. Asking someone to publish my story is a business proposition. "Hey, here's my time, give me your resources, you'll get money and I'll get read.

Suddenly, from a business perspective, "There's no place for stories like mine," no longer means the marketplace needs another publisher. It means I need to write different stories. Maybe one day I can earn the right, like Louis LaMour or Robert Ludlum or Piers Anthony, to publish anything I want just because I want to. But the business model has to be there.

Does this mean I need to stop writing the same kind of stories? Not necessarily. But if a certain kind of thing is pretty universally not getting picked up, it's not the wisest use of my energy and talents. And, frankly, I learned the hard way that I don't have enough energy and talents at this point in my life to be able to justify wasting them.

Until next time, keep the quills to the parchment and chisels to the clay.

.Nevets.

Writers and the Sin of Business

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Its pretty appropriate that as I get ready for tonight's launch of Solitude I finally get a chance to sit down and write about marketing, as I'd promised a few days back. My allergies and sinuses have been keeping me virtually braindead since late last week, and there's no immediate hope on the horizon. Springtime in Indiana. Ahhhhhhhhh. Refreshing.

So here's the deal. I'm writing this writers because I'm a writer and this is my writing blog. However, I have friends all over the creative spectra, and have dabbled in other acts of imagination myself, and I can tell you that this problem is common to all:

You are an artist.

You want to express yourself.

There's a story that just needs to be told through your particular medium.

You are guided by the muses, not by the Almighty Dollar (or the less mighty Scrip).

So far so good. The problem (if such it is) enters on the negative half of the ledger --

I don't want to take orders for mass produced stuff.

I don't want to restrict myself to one style.

I don't want to produce this, just because this sells.

I don't want to producers for others; I want to produce for myself, truth, and the greater good.

But, okay, okay. I'll even grant you that that's fine. I don't really have problem if you say all of those things, especially if you mean them. As long as you don't add (verbally or behaviorally) any of these:

I want to make a living doing this!

I want to do this full time!

I want to finally break-in!

I want to start getting some recognition for all my work.

Marketing and approaching the craft of writing like a professional business are among the tools necessary to make those last four happen. If you shun those, you're making the others a whole lot more difficult. If you want to write for yourself, or if you want to write for the story itself (whatever that means!) then you need to accept your own or the story's thanks in return, and be happy with that. If you want agents, editors, publishers, and broader audiences to also receive and appreciate your work, you need to deliver it to them effectively -- and that's exactly what you're deciding not to do when you eschew the business side of writing or of any art.

Some examples --

* Building a platform helps give you a base audience and also keeps you in touch with your future readership so that you can be attune to their responses to your work.

* Branding yourself with a genre makes your body of work a more coherent to agents and to readers alike, as well as giving yourself a direction to focus your productive energies.

* Getting your stuff out there even when you're afraid that it's not quite perfect yet, because there's this seventeenth reader that you know gives great feedback on blahblahblah gets your materials in the hands of the people who publish, which sitting in workshops does not do.

* Learning the industry not only familiarizes you with people and helps build networks and connections, but it also helps you learn the lingo and the process, so you can speak and understand the language.

Et cetera. Can you succeed without doing these or some of the other important business practices? Sure, you can. Exceptional individuals do. Not to kick you in the teeth or anything, but most of us are not (by definition) exceptional. If you don't do these things, you are making it harder on yourself.

So it's up to you -- are you doing this for self-satisfaction or because the story spiritually compels you? If so, the campfire is just fine for storytellers. Are you doing this because it's what you want to do and who you want to be? Then you need to suck it up, and act like a pro.

Michael Jordan has been able to play baseball and golf, but he branded himself as a basketball player when the time came, and that's what he built his career on, how he started to make his connections, and build his platform and his network.

And now... Solitude starts. :)

.Nevets.

Solitude Plug!

Don't forget -- the Solitude: Prologue starts this Wednesday! If you're not sure what I'm talking about, check out the trailer!

The story starts on June 1, of course, but you'll want to sign up to follow the Solitude twitter feed before that. Why?

Because while the prologue has been outlined and a few key elements have been fully scripted, it is also interactive. Interactive? Yes, interactive! You will get to interact with the the MC of Solitude between the 20th of May and the 1st of June, giving you an opportunity to help determine how well we know him, and to help shape the context in which things turn bad at the start of the full story.

And not only that, but remember there is also a contest involved. A contest? Yes, a contest! Everyone who signs up to follow the Solitude story via its unique twitter feed (not mine!) before the full story starts on June 1 will be entered into a drawing to win one of find, spiral-bound copies of the complete Solitude, signed by me.

Questions about the story? Comment or e-mail! Questions or reservations about Twitter? Comment or e-mail!

In case you haven't gathered from the trailer, Solitude will be a story of psychological suspense about a man who takes an ordinary job in Washington, D. C., only to be confronted by a sudden and terrifying turn of events! You will be reading his very words as he struggles against shadows that might be imagined, or might be the very real yet unseen.

Note -- for those concerned about such things, the language will be clean, the themes suspenseful but appropriate for a wide audince, and because you will be reading the MC's words, any violence would only be as graphic as you might personally imagine.

.Nevets.