Sticking to Genre – Is it Junk Food for the Brain?
Doing a free giveway of the print edition of The Consequences of Preserving Outlaws in Arsenic (http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/61207-the-consequences-of-preserving-outlaws-in-arsenic) has made me think about genre.
It’s a topic I’ve thought about a lot over the years. ‘Consequences’ flat out refuses to fit into a genre. It has elements of Westerns, Romance, Adventure, Horror, Road Trip fiction, Coming of Age, Fantasy, Thriller, Humour… the list goes on. This made it very difficult to market initially. I don’t really think of it as any of those things. I think of it as a story I had to tell, as characters I needed to give a voice to, and as a rollicklingly fun way to spend my time. I wanted it to be a fun way for other people to spend their time too.
Story is the thing I yearn for most. Genre tells me what type of story I might expect, and certainly there are genres I’m attracted to more than others but I must admit I read eclectically and widely. The story is the thing – the Holy Grail of reading – and I am constantly seeking it out. Sometimes I find it in Fantasy, or Chick Lit, or Science Fiction or Classics or Literature with a capital ‘L’. Other times in YA or Children’s, Westerns, Crime or just good old General Fiction. A truly satisfying story is a magical, elusive creature. It can pop up anywhere but you have to keep your eyes open for it. It can be about the least expected things – racial injustice and small town life in the 30s (To Kill a Mockingbird), a 19th century governess struggling with her passion for her employer (Jane Eyre),the end of childhood innocence on a summer’s day (Stand By Me), murder, lesbianism and home-spun wisdom (Fried Green Tomatoes), two small folk on an bleak, gruelling quest to save the world (The Lord of the Rings).The key elements are that you love the characters and want to spend time with them (even the horrible ones) and that the characters grow in some way. Things don’t just happen to them – they initiate actions as well as react to them.
Personally, I can’t continue to read in the same genre for a sustained amount of time. People do. Some people will only stay within the prescribed boundaries of one or two genres. Why? Because they know what they’re getting. It’s like food. Genre can often be made up of ‘junk food’. Processed to a strict recipe, tweaked to appeal to our reading taste buds, addictive and, most importantly, comfortable and comforting. Most people who know me well know I am addicted to cans of Diet Coke. Diet Coke never varies, unlike fruit (very unpredictable!) or even a cup of tea. I know it will provide me with exactly the same hit again and again. I also know that it is very unhealthy for me. When I’m on holiday I’ll often want a McDonalds’ quarter pounder even though I rarely eat it at home. Why? Because I’m feeling unsettled and, again, I want something that I know and that is always consistent. Real food, on the other hand, has a much wider range of tastes and flavours, is better for me and widens my tastes. However it also contains the risk that I’ll encounter something I don’t like. But so what? And if I’m eating a range of food, the chances are I’ll find more things I like than don’t. To me, reading is like food. I can stick with my ‘safe’ options or I can go for the range, including a bit of junk now and then. So, if I’ve just a read a Dark Fantasy I’ll want to read a biography next, or I might fancy a slice of Americana or a bite of Victorian Crime. It’s not that I’m arguing that all genre books are ‘junk’ only that limiting your palate to one or two things isn’t healthy. If all you eat are apples and grapes, where are the rest of your nutrients coming from, not to mention new taste sensations?
It’s no surprise then that I write in the same way; it is, however, problematical. Not only do I change genres when I write, I often cross genres in the same book. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is not purposeful, simply a result of the stories I want to tell. When I wrote my first novel in my twenties my agent at the time had a difficult time selling it. She got wonderful feedback from editors – how much they enjoyed the novel, how I was an author to watch, etc, but every single one of them said they couldn’t take it because it was too difficult to place in the marketplace. It didn’t fit neatly into a genre. Was it Horror? A social novel? No one knew, including myself. I should have learnt from this. Actually, I did try to learn. I tried to choose a recognisable genre and write, but it was torture. It sucked the joy out writing for me and forced me to make a difficult decision. I had to write for myself. Thus, at twenty eight I left my agency (a very large and famous one) and struck out to become the greatest genre-busting writer the world has even known.
Er, that didn’t happen. What did happen was that someone I knew asked me if I’d be interested in teaching English Literature and Language in Further Education for a few hours a week. I desperately needed the money but had never wanted to teach. I had a BA in English & History, an MA in Writing and agreed to do my teaching certificate alongside my teaching. It was terrifying, but you know what? I loved it. I still do. But in all that time I have never taken more than three days of teaching a week. Now I do two. Why? Because doing more means I can’t write as much as I want to – need to – and that has never been an option. It also means I have little money (I was thirty-five before I could buy my first used car) but it has also meant I can write what pleases me. So, I have – quite a few novels in fact, each one different, each one hard to place generically (with, perhaps, the exception of The Army of Righteous Deliverance – Victorian crime thriller) and each one utterly a story I wanted to tell.
I write about mummified cowboys, a teenage girl who discovers she is an android, a religious zealot who loses her faith. These are to name but a few. I write about them because I love them. Because they call to me.
I can only hope they call to other people too.
Tagged: free giveaway, Genre, literature, Reading, writing
