Before I start this post I feel I should inform you that I received a rejection e-mail today from the publisher who showed an interest in The-Book-Formerly-Known-As-Silver. Which I was expecting and means I can now consider rewriting it. But no feedback, what's up with that? What does that mean?
Anyway...
As
part of my 2012 New Year resolutions, I decided to start entering short story
competitions. So since January, I have
been trying to enter at least one a month.
It hasn’t quite worked out that way but I have entered quite a few. I’m still to be placed which has led me to
start planning an assault on the short story including a course and lots of
practice and research, but that’s another story…
A
recent short story competition in Writing Magazine is on the theme of
love. Easy, I thought. Every genre can have a love theme and so I
set about planning my entry. I came up
with about seven ideas and whittled them down to four. Two apocalyptic love stories and two nice,
normal romances. It was one of the
apocalyptic stories which interested me the most so that was the one I wrote.
I
read it back yesterday with a mind to getting a critique done on it. I don’t know if it was good, as such. It just didn’t feel right. So I went through it with a highlighter and
picked out my favourite pieces and attempted a rewrite.
Then I wondered if apocalypse stories count as fantasy stories? Or are they horror? Is the reason I'm having problems with this because I'm not writing a fantasy story?
I suppose what I'm really asking is can writers get stuck in their genre? Feeling frustrated, I threw the story to the side and had some chocolate.
With
the morning came a clearer head and I will be having another bash at this story. However, the point remains. Do we write in a particular genre because
it’s where our heart lies or because we can’t write anything else?
I
have been writing fantasy long before I made a conscious decision that this is
what I enjoyed writing. Before the
writers block incident of 2001, I had been writing only paranormal
romance. Since then I have experimented
with dark fantasy, high fantasy and epic fantasy but all of it fantasy.
Given
my experience, am I capable of writing a crime thriller? Perhaps, although a dragon might appear at
any moment.
I
like to think I would be able to change genre easily, but it is so easy to get
stuck in a rut. Considering that each
piece of work and novel is a new learning curve, changing genre might just be
too much to handle.
While
this thought process is interesting, it doesn’t necessarily help me. Love is universal, across all genres and I
should be able to write a good love story.
Perhaps a fantasy love story would not stand a chance at getting placed
in a non-fantasy magazine but that shouldn’t stop me from being able to write
something I can be proud of.
So
I will put that down to a bad day, brush myself off and have another go. After all, a writer is nothing without
perseverance.
Do
you write across genres? Or do you have
any favourite authors who do?
I think writers write what they know, and often what we know is what we love. I adore your fantasy stories, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't love to read anything you'd written under another genre. (I want to get my hands on this apocolyptic story asap!)
ReplyDeleteA good writer is a good writer, which you are. The genre, for me, is about story telling. If you come up with an enticing story, you can WRITE anything.. and I can't wait to read it.
All very, very good points! I like the idea/fact that a genre is just the story telling.
ReplyDeleteThank you - reading this comment last night gave me a new wave of inspiration for my apocalyptic love story :) *flexes keyboard fingers*