The books I read as a child and teenager shaped my perception of the world and molded me into who I am today. From those books I learned friendship. I learned to dream. I learned love. I learned sorrow. I learned happiness. I learned that no matter what happens, as long as there are still books in the world, I will never truly be alone.
Hopefully the books I write will create that same sense of yearning for adventure in other children. Even if I don’t accomplish that goal, my writing brings me back to those days of discovery. (more…)
To be completely honest, I never really thought much about genre before about three years ago. I had little interest in publication (at least not serious interest), so it didn’t matter how to categorize it. I wrote what I wanted to read.
I still do that, to an extent. I write what moves me. When an idea inspires me, I write it. When dark things happen, it’s because it’s visceral and it resonates with me. If I look back and see that it’s horror, than let it be so.
To answer a question about why I write my genre, I first would need to pick a genre as “mine.” And I can’t really do that. Sci-fi, fantasy, horror, romance, all these (and more!) appeal to me at different times. I can’t lock down on one genre as my favorite, or even having a preference. I’m much more likely to figure out the genre once I get a decent story idea in place, rather then say, “I’m going to write a fantasy story.” When I set about to writing something genre, I find it full of stereotypes and cliches. Deciding from the beginning to write a genre story is too constricting for me. When I make a plot, and a real character or two, and work the genre around them, I find myself with a much more interesting story.
Looking over the past year of writing though, there’s one thing that most of my stories have in common: they’re almost always set in a contemporary setting with at least one foot in normalcy. Where that other foot steps is always the question. One story might be a monster-hunting horror story, another might be an alien invasion, and another might look into the heart and soul of loneliness, but in order for me to have relatable, sympathetic protagonists, I want that anchor in the real world. These stories always start out with a basic plot and character and go from there. The genre writes itself. Is it a comedy? Horror? Does it take place in the past or future? These are questions that don’t have answers until I have a story, and every story goes on a different path.
Not to say a pure genre story is terribly hard to write or read, but I will usually find the story more enjoyable if I can look out the window and see some of the same things my protagonist would see. I guess you might call my favorite genre “urban”. Instead of a fantasy story in a mystical land, I’d much rather put the elves and magic in the modern, contemporary world and see what kind of trouble happens. It can even be set in the past or future, as long as it’s about real people doing real things. A Sci-Fi story about space battles doesn’t interest me; I’m much more likely to write about the people down at the planets surface and the effects of said space battle on their lives.
Okay, here’s the thing about genre: I don’t know where I fit.
The first novel I ever wrote . . . (well, let’s be honest, it was the first novel I tried to write) was a terrible science fiction story about a civil war between the Earth and the moon. It was amazingly awful and it clocked in at just over 50,000 words.
I’d written it for a class and my professor gave me a kind and much understated critique: “It needs work.”
Boy did it ever. I think there was only a single scene in the entire novel where she’d penned “This is good.” Everything else was a blood bath of editing marks and suggestions.
Still, though, I was undeterred. I had the overconfidence of youth and I was sure that my genius would eventually be recognized. (Did I mention that during the writing of that novel I had decided that dialogue was overrated and that the reader would spend most of their time in the characters’ minds and the majority of my novel would be told through story action? I don’t think I can accurately describe what a train wreck this was.)
I still remember the first horror book I ever read. Scary Stories to Read in the Dark sat on the bookshelf in the back of my third grade classroom. I read over and over about just-missed encounters with hook-handed psychopaths and puzzle nights that foretold the murdering maniac crawling through the apartment window.
My horror education remained pretty basic till my teen years. It felt like something forbidden. Stephen King and friends seemed like corruptors of souls, as if being caught with a hardcover of The Stand might condemn your eternal soul. I read a lot of classic horror and science fiction, which I could argue as classic instead of genre. Stevenson, Dickinson, Wells, Verne, Poe, and a variety of classic terrifying dishes were read greedily, as if any moment, I would be found out.
What is the quickest route to the shadows? Tell someone there is nothing there in the dark worth their time. Their curiosity will be peaked, and they will go in search for what lays waiting just outside the narrow vision of the flashlight beam. (more…)
Genre is a French word meaning “kind” or “sort” according to Wikipedia. Genre, though, for writers is what we write, how we express ourselves, where we want to take our readers away from their everyday lives. Certain genres are overdone, some are less explored, and many are confused with the medium in which they are delivered. TV westerns are not necessarily the same as Hollywood westerns which are different still from Pulp westerns. However, they are ALL westerns.
Some of us here in the Cafe write in distinct genres, others still crossover from into another and then back again or perhaps into a third. As readers we are attracted to certain genres for entertainment: science fiction, romance, urban fantasy, high fantasy, etc… As writers sometimes we eschew what entertains us in favor of what we like to write or are good at. Or think we’re good at.
This week we’re exploring why we write in the genre we’ve chosen. We’re going to tell you what’s attractive about that genre to us and we hope you’ll tell us what you like. The regulars here know we run the gamut of any list of genre you might find anywhere, but why we write in these milieux is a topic of conversation over coffee, tea, or cocoa on a cold winter’s day.
Pull up a chair. You’re always welcome here but you’ll have to bus your own dishes.
I sent out a novel for the first time. Even though it got rejected twice, the “revise & resubmit” was pretty much the best thing that could have happened.
I finally (finally!) understand passive voice in my writing. I don’t always see it, and I don’t always correct it, but its so much better now. I’ve also gotten more confidence in my writing. I’ve taken more challenges, I’ve tried new genres.
But most of all, I just wrote more. I usually wrote NaNo every year. But beyond that, I didn’t do much. A couple pieces of fan fiction here, a drabble there.
In 2012, I wrote 256,213 words of fiction alone. I’m sorry, I bolded that to brag. In years previous, I would probably write NaNoWriMo, maybe a handful of one-shots. This year I went for pretty much every challenge that came at me.
Sometimes I drowned. August got stuck watching my son while I locked myself in the bedroom to finish Camp NaNo August. (I did more or less the same thing in Camp NaNo June, but my husband was home to manage the child.) But I damn well got it done. (Okay, except the two flash fiction assignments I totally dropped the ball on. Whoops.)
With the flash fiction assignments, short story ideas, and the handful of ideas I wrote without any sort of prompting, its been a great year. Unfortunately, it means that 2013 is going to be a year of an awful lot of rewriting and editing. But I got so much done in 2012, that I’m pretty amped about 2013.
And hey, this month I’m jumping in with Sara & Ted to finish my NaNo novel in January.
Yeah, confidence is buried in there somewhere. Just has to be unearthed from the pile of insecurities. 2013 is about capitalizing on that.
Oh what a year 2012 was. In November 2011 I wrote the best thing I’d ever written and I intended to get it edited and submit it for consideration to publishers.
I did that.
I’m not talking about resolutions, I’m talking about what resolving to do that did to me.
There’s this theory that I have talked about in the past in other places about how everything is built on the simple concept of The Line: a connector between points A and B or S and T or whatever you want them to be. Once humans started connecting things we were fated to do things like write with pictures then letters or numbers. To build things with branches and stones, to connect one corner to another with a line of materials and then to keep building on those lines.
A Wandering Line is a connection that’s not made or that veers off away from point E to points unknown or undefined. A Dead Line is one that terminates before it reaches the intended connecting point.
Prior to 2012 there were a number of Dead Lines in my writing career. I have to acknowledge that some of those missed connections (aw, jeez, who’d’a thought I’d make THAT reference?) were simply from the fear of making that connection. Those Lines might, indeed, have died but at least they would have been natural deaths instead of just sort of falling off a cliff, dragged by a huge hairy wolf made of fear.
I’m talking about rejection.
No one wants to hear that their work isn’t ready or good or anything that isn’t positive.
But I’m not afraid of that rejection any more. Not at all. I’ve gotten several “thank you but no” emails after submitting short stories and I got one very nice “I like it but it’s not ready” note.
But I made those connections. Those points were joined and now they have to be built upon.
I got there by having the time to spend on the novel, making the effort to revise the thing and make it better.
So how have I changed as a writer this year? Quite simply I’ve identified some glaringly obvious (now they’re obvious) problems with my work and made myself better. Hopefully I’m good, but I’m definitely better than I was when I wrote that novel that I’m so proud of.
That “I like it but it’s not ready” note wasn’t at all troublesome. In fact it increased my resolve to continue the Line that would take me from enthusiastic amateur writer to published author.
2013 is the year of having the confidence to build on those Lines, make the connections, and get to the next point. It’s time and I know it. So improved writing skills and the confidence to keep after it are the major changes for the year.
I’m looking forward to making the connections that will allow me to garner readers. Then building on them to define a universe that pulls you in.
And crossing off those Dead Lines and not worrying about them any more.
When we started the Confabulator Cafe a year ago, I was the rebel. I was going to be the one writer posting from the nonfiction perspective. After all, I am a nonfiction writer, it’s been buttering my bread for many years. In fact, looking back at my posts, there’s even one in which I pretentiously declare that I am too serious a writer to do anything so plebian as to submit a story for publication. [0]
Yeah. Some days I need to just get over myself.
The appeal to blogging for the Cafe is that it would require me to stretch myself, to commit to a long series of voluntary deadlines, and just release stuff out in the Universe and see if it flies [1]. Develop, in public, as a writer. In Cafe editorial meetings we talk about expanding our readership to beyond ourselves and maybe our immediate families. I sit quietly and try to pretend that I’m not glad that our readership is modest; that deep down, the idea the future employers can Google me already freaks me out. I haven’t even told my own mother about the Cafe [2].
As far as developing as a writer, though, the most educational assignments have been the short stories. As I have stated repeatedly, fiction is not in my wheelhouse. Short form fiction, written within the stated limits of the Cafe, and posted online is so far out of my comfort zone that you can’t even see the soft, fluffy pillows and high-loft comforter and cats snoozing in front of the crackling fire from there. So safe. So dull.
About 20-some-odd years ago, I decided I was going to be a published author. After many mistakes and missteps, this dream finally became a reality in 2012 with my first sale of a short story. (My story will be published as part of an anthology in August.)
Now, 20+ years is a long time for such a dream to come to fruition. Certainly. But to be clear, this was not some arbitrary self-imposed deadline. I never said 2012 was going to be “the year I get published.” (In truth, I’ve been saying that for several years.)
About 20-some-odd years ago, I decided I was going to be a published author. After many mistakes and missteps, this dream finally became a reality in 2012 with my first sale of a short story. (My story will be published as part of an anthology in August.)