So…What Do You Write (Cue Existential Crisis)

#writingcommunity #booksky #amwriting #writing

You’re at an event, surrounded by writers or well-read folks. Maybe it’s a book signing, a panel, a casual gathering. You’re feeling pretty good about being part of this community, until someone asks the question:

“Do you have a book out?”

That’s the common question.

You smile. “Yes, I have one published book.”

And then they hit with the follow-up…the one you dread:

“What genre do you write?”

That’s when it happens. The inner cringe. The throat-tightening pause.

I quickly answer, “Science fiction.”

Cue the wave of embarrassment.

Now, if I am at a convention filled with other SF & F people? No problem. I light up. I belong. But out in the wider world—where people aren’t gathered because of their shared love of warp drives, galactic empires, or fairies and dragons—it’s different. That’s when it creeps in. That all too familiar feeling.

I’ve loved science fiction since I was 11 years old, when Star Wars hit the big screen and everything changed. I devoured fanzines, watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Battlestar Galactica, and Alien. Awe inspiring stuff to a preteen boy with a head full of stars. I’ve been a lifelong fan of science fiction and fantasy ever since. I have great respect for the genre. I even got my MFA from a program that focused on Popular Fiction.

So why the guilt? Why the embarrassment?

We all kind of know why.

Despite billion-dollar movies and cultural phenomenons like Harry Potter, genre fiction still doesn’t get the respect it deserves from certain corners of the literary world. It’s still considered “lesser” by some—especially the crowd that leans literary. They prefer their fiction grounded, quiet, introspective. Realistic. And if you show up talking about space vampires, they assume you’re not a “serious writer.”

Never mind you’re writing about grief, or identity, or humanity, or power, or love. If your characters are on a spaceship instead of in a Brooklyn brownstone, well…good luck getting invited to the serious table.

My first book was a techno-thriller—grounded in near future science, with just enough speculative edge to keep it interesting. It wasn’t quite as embarrassing. But now? Now I am writing a space opera with a 700-year-old vampire as the protagonist. And every time I say it out loud, I can feel it, the voice in my head whispering, They’re judging you.

This isn’t real literature.

You’re not a real writer.

This is silly, pulpy genre stuff.

But here’s the truth. My book deals with identity, memory, redemption, power and betrayal. It’s about what it means to be human—and to lose that humanity. It’s not a comedy, although hopefully there is some humor in it. And I am rewriting it again, digging deeper, trying to get it right.

So where does this shame come from?

One word: (ok, it’s really 2 words) Imposter syndrome, raising its ugly head once again.

I heard Harlan Coben this morning talking about his 37th novel, and imposter syndrome. He said he wakes every morning afraid he’s not a real writer. Maybe that was hyperbole, but maybe not.

Maybe we never really get over it.

I do love science fiction. I love the imagination, the freedom, the challenge of exploring real human issues through a speculative lens. I love building worlds that reflect our own in strange, distorted, sometimes illuminating ways.

And I want to be proud of what I’m doing. Even though, some days, I’m not.

But it won’t stop me.

I’ll keep writing, because that’s what real writers do.