genre wars

If I asked one of the three people who read Don’t Worry About It what genre they thought it was… what would they say?

As two of the three people who read it, (I count as two because I read it a lot) I would say, it depends on the day, and my mood. Which is so very strange, considering the content of the novel doesn’t change. You could say it’s literary, if you were being generous. I certainly pitched it as literary fiction a number of times, even though the prose is not quite there. Could say it’s a romance, even though it’s not, despite the Wren/Ashley romance itself being a central part of the story. You could say, if you were being very cheeky, that it falls under the umbrella of women’s fiction. I mean, what’s more womanly than women fucking each other for a hundred thousand words? You could call it erotica. Or upmarket. Or, barf, queer/wlw/sapphic. I could call it drama… satire… contemporary… crossover… new adult… book club… or just plain “fiction”. And that’s just off the top of my head.

The concept of “genre” is so bizarre. It’s meant multiple different things to me in my life. I suppose, at the very, most basic level, genre is a different type of a thing under one umbrella. Usually, the umbrella is representative of a medium (TV, film, music, etc) and the genres describe specific subgroups within. However, “genre” also has a somewhat schlocky connotation, referring to the subgroup of fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and similar. “Genre”, in that instance, implies some amount of cheese. Some amount of low-brow, trashy fiction. A “genre” show is something like Supernatural or Doctor Who. But even though “mystery” is a fairly structured and terse genre, you probably wouldn’t lump it in with… genre. See, it’s very simple. Mystery is a genre, but it’s not genre. Make sure you write that down. Going even further down the rabbit hole, I have also understood genre as Storytelling Method. That is, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, screenwriting, etc. So, fiction is a genre. The TV show Supernatural is a genre. And mystery is a genre. All genres, but each application of “genre” means something different.

It’s confusing. You would think the lines become clearer when you’re trying to query a book and you literally have to choose an option from a dropdown menu in the agent’s QueryTracker submission form and yet— it’s not. I’m not convinced all agents, readers, reviewers, publishers, etc, are in agreement on the supposed constraints of one genre vs another. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking, and everyone else knows exactly what’s going on and I’m the only one who’s confused.

In most cases, I would argue “fanfiction” is, in and of itself, a genre. There are expectations within the world of fanfiction, and tropes (heaven help us all, so many tropes), and a pretty narrow, specific style of writing. In my time, I have gone through varying stages of fanfiction-ness in my writing. Most of the time, I think my writing has always been at its most successful and interesting when I veer away from that. However, there is no denying that fanfiction has shaped my writing style. On one hand, I struggle with that. There are gaps in my writing knowledge and experience as a result. On the other hand, it makes my original work unique and adds an additional layer to my literary fiction aspirations. Though it may seem like I’m constantly turning my nose up at things, fandom and fanfiction instilled in me a big anti-snob streak. When writing becomes too high-minded and academic, no matter how “literary”, I lose interest. There’s no hook. I don’t think everything has to be relatable, but I do want a certain amount of groundedness in the content I consume.

Mixing the fanfiction style (or maybe my specific fanfiction style, even though I just described it as narrow and specific above, I KNOW) with my aspirations of writing original fiction has proven difficult to capitalize on. Too much of one, not enough of the other, too much of each, maybe and probably both. It doesn’t really fit anywhere, even with what feels like the increasing fanfictioning of mainstream fiction. And there is, of course, the ever-present possibility that my writing is just not that good. I tend to discount the quality factor a little bit, not because it is undeniably untrue, but because many bad novels get published. If my novel was bad and published, it would simply be one of many bad novels already on the shelves.

Novel 2 follows from Don’t Worry in a similar, weird-genre fashion. Which, if you’re familiar with the non-success of Don’t Worry’s Query Tour of Misery and Destitution 2023/24, you will know does not bode well for it. I’ve talked a little about the genre weirdness of Novel 2, which is a bit brazen of me considering for privacy reasons I have to remain mostly mum on what it’s actually about, but still, I talk about it because it’s interesting. I just had a friend (shoutout to friend) give notes on it, and seeing someone else’s reaction to your own work never really gets old. It is amazing what other people, who are indeed different than me and experience the world differently than I do, will pull out of your words, sometimes even the complete opposite of what you intended or expected. It’s exhilarating and exhausting. But also inextricably intertwined with the entire concept of creating art in the first place. I have made something of myself and shared it with you; the act of your receiving this piece of me will inevitably transform it into something else. Art can never just be the artist or the audience. It’s the relationship between the two where true meaning is derived. It’s the Kuleshov effect if instead of two film shots edited together, it’s the act of consuming a piece of art. Most importantly to my point, though, is that this friend saw some of the themes and characters in the story in ways that were contradictory to how I did. We both read the same words, and came away from them with incompatible interpretations of said words. Sometimes, genre feels like that as well. Everyone reads differently.

It’s pleasurable when a genre is executed well within its specific parameters. And yet, somehow, it is similarly pleasurable when genre gets fucked around a bit. We want to be inside and outside of the box at the same time. Maybe the true fear is when there’s no box to orient yourself at all, regardless of where you fall in proximity to it. If we don’t know what is or is not weird, we can’t specifically derive pleasure from the fact that something is or is not weird. Palindromic? Yes. But also, true. Maybe I’m just experiencing delusions of grandeur, but sometimes I do think my writing can be a bit boxless. A bit difficult to orient. And things that are difficult to orient are difficult to sell. The forever fruitless thought exercise is how, exactly, one would have marketed Don’t Worry if both an agent and publisher had been insane enough to pick it up.

There are times where I write something I think is funny and someone else thinks it’s sad. There are times where I write something I think is sad and someone else thinks it’s funny. These chafing interpretations sit at a three-way cross section between 1) writer error (aka I didn’t write it good), 2) my reading of my words, and 3) your reading of my words. Very rarely will all three of these things be in alignment. But… that’s also the point. Paradoxically, good writing is both specific and interpretative. How does that makes sense? It doesn’t, really. Except for the fact that it does.

I think Don’t Worry About It has a very bittersweet ending. Very spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. On the other hand, it’s also been called very sad. On the other other hand, someone left a lovely comment on it just the other day that suggested the literary fiction world may not have enjoyed it because it was “too happy” for the genre. Despite the scripts and the tropes we supposedly all intrinsically understand after a certain age, we interpret genre similar to how we interpret the stories that take place within them. That is; everyone reads differently.

Am I splitting hairs? Does any of this matter? I wonder, as I often do, if this amount of navel gazing can ever benefit anyone. I suppose it’s important in the sense that I need some kind of story to tell myself about why no one wanted to publish my book(s). But also, the more I embrace these blurred lines, the less likely I am to perpetually feel like I am standing on one side of a glass enclosure and every other person is on the other side. The more likely I am to feel at home in the great animal soup of humanity.

It makes sense that genre is fucked up; it was made by us. Most things people make are pretty fucked up and don’t work good. At least genre is a somewhat innocuous offender compared to global supply chains, cigarettes, and money. That doesn’t make it any easier to get Don’t Worry or novel 2 published, but hey, it’s just money.

And, fucked up but true, just like Wren in Don’t Worry, the protagonist of novel 2? ALSO SMOKES. I’ve never smoked a cigarette a day in my life. What’s wrong with me.