Anyone out there NOT WRITING GENRE?

I'm writing a memoir - similar to one of those ones you see on the shelves at Borders with titles like "The boy no one loved" and "An invisible child", "A child called it"- except that I just crack up laughing right in the middle of the store when I'm looking at the covers of those books. But yes, I guess I'm writing something similar..except with a much better title and a splash of humour thrown in. (Well being mean to my ex-MIL makes *me* laugh anyway) I also have no intention to actually publish it.

We live in the same suburb..there are four others (which I know of) in the vicinity. We are planning our own write-in. You're welcome to come when/if it actually ends up happening.

Simone

I usually don't write genre pieces . . . well, to be frank, I've never written fan fiction and I don't do romance. I've done what could loosely be described as sci-fi for NaNo twice, but speculative fiction is probably the closest you'll get. No space ships or aliens or anything like that. Genre can make for a fun toy to play with, but the stories in my head are never defined in that way.

That said, this year is my first attempt at a genre piece (i.e., historical fiction), although it's more got that label due to the setting rather than any retelling of any actual, real historical event. It's mostly just turned into a run of the mill dysfunctional family drama with sex, alcoholism, violence and dick jokes (seriously, the Ancient Romans loved dick jokes! I just found that out yesterday and it gained me another 750 odd words!).

Caffeine Spider

Does fanfiction count? I was writing a fantasy one but that has already fallen through :P

I am not sure how successful I am being at writing with either depth or meaning but I had themes (community, belonging, inertia, resistance to change) when I planned my novel out. Five days into November and I am not sure how successfully I am exploring them. I have found that it is easy to fall into writing scenes that move my plot along but don't really examine any of the more subtle points I was trying to include. My plan is just to keep writing and see if anything is salvageable in December.

‘all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact are imagined’ Benedict Anderson

The closest I can think of that my book is to a genre is mystery/suspense. But it's not as mysterious/suspenseful as I imagine others in the genre would be. It's more just a story that intrigues me that has true love, betrayal, heartache, etc. At the end of the day, it'll probably just be considered mainstream more than anything.

I dunno. I'll just write the thing and see where it lands:)

PS, I just hit 10k!!! Woohoo!!! *Cue goofy victory dance ------> Uh-huh, oh yeah, come on, baby!!!

:D
sorry...

Rebekah :)
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I've always written fanfic, but this year I'm going autobiographical. Hopefully not to my own detriment.

Awesome thread!

I call mine sci-fi for the sake of convenience but it's dreadfully inaccurate. The setting may be futuristic and science-fiction, but it, like much of the Golden Age sci-fi shorts, focused far more on social and psychological aspects. I enjoy transcendental themes such as exploring the nature of consciousness, fundamental motivations to behaviour and the definition (not meaning, definition) of life, so naturally I'm trying to cram all of that into this book.

That's why the project title is "Anthropometry" (subtitle being "The Measure of Man"... I was in the mood for jokes...) Of course, I couldn't possibly ever use such a dry title as that for real. It'll probably end up being something like "The Last Falcon" or whatever.

This *is* proving to be an interesting thread, and congrats on the 10k, rdhay :-)

I dunno, but sometimes I find "trying" to be deep can be counterproductive or destructive . . . I couldn't count the amount of times I've read a novel and I just want to shake an author and scream "don't preach at me! I can work this out from your story already!".

Unless you're trying to be as overt as something like Animal Farm, I think you're better off just writing your plot, developing your characters and focussing on your story, and avoid getting mired in too much conscious proselytising. If they are issues you care about and think about on a regular basis, they will come through as you go along. I guess for me, often I'll have a few issues I want to play with in a piece (this year it was feminine sexuality and power in a patriarchal society), but a) those issues came secondary to the initial flash of inspiration that brought me to the story and b) already after just five days of writing things are already proving much more complex and grey than a simple case of a battle of the sexes.

StrawPony - your stuff sounds a lot like the stuff I'm interested in too (please tell me you were another one morning when JG Ballard passed this year!). I guess a lot of that gets labelled speculative fiction or slipstream fiction because we're just so obsessed with having neat little tags these days *sigh*

Caffeine Spider

StrawPoney - PLEASE keep the title! I love it.

I'm in a similar position to Puddles. The themes I want to explore (involving concepts of alienation and how different people interact) are often being glossed over in favour of plot while I try to get the words out. Alternately, I am falling into the trap of info-dumping and telling rather than showing. As a reader it would drive me mad. I've opted for just pushing forward regardless and worrying about it after NaNo.

I don't know if my novel fits into a genre. I was trying to be at least vaguely well-plotted and stuff but it's turned into one long running joke about the quirks of the publishing industry. Also, roller derby. The velociraptors are yet to come.

Municipal Liaison for Australia and New Zealand :: Melbourne
Moderator for Games, Diversions, and Other Exciting Forms of Procrastination

I have no idea what genre mine is.

It's horror, sci-fi, surrealist, realist, black comedy, dark, really dark, political, really political, deep characters, and yet full of mindless action.

NaNoWriMo '09: Barbarism - "...society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism..."

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I didn't start this thread with snobbish intentions. Personally, I don't write escapist literature, but I like reading it sometimes. There are elements of escapism in almost all literature, anyway. And there is nothing wrong with writing whatever you like. And in a way, there is no other choice. We write what comes out of our fingers, and that's it. A few people alluded to that already. Still, I am interested in relationships and the politics of the individual, so this is what i try to write. Problem is, its particularly hard going writing this type of stuff!

Has anyone here ever seen the movie, "The Man Who wasn't there" by the Coen Bros? It has strong existential themes. The main character is a non-entity. He doesn't know what he wants, he doesn't know what he likes or even how he feels. He doesn't do much either. In the extras, the Coen Bros said: "For a few years we'd had this barber character who had no sense of self, no personality; then one day we had the idea that he wanted to go into dry-cleaning. It was then we knew that we had a movie to pitch to the film companies."

They pitched for a multi-multi-multi million dollar film based on the premise of a barber who wants to go into dry cleaning... and more than this, the film is RIVETING, and this 'non-person' is one of the most authentic characters you'll see. I don't know; it's thought-provoking to me.

Thanks for all your comments. I haven't had time to read them all yet, but thats because I have to go to the library every time I use the internet, and they only give you one hour :-(

I've been living under a rock called "medical degree" most of the past few years so I didn't even know JG Ballard passed. I've only read Empire of the Sun, and that was in year 9, so it was pretty trying to get through it then, but retrospectively I think I would find it a lot more engaging now.

Speculative fiction, a good label! Slipstream fiction is another good one, though possibly more applicable to my 2007 version of this novel, because there was a lot more sudden introspection and moments of existential dissonance... if that makes any sense :\

All in all though that's very helpful, because I've struggling to neatly define what I'm writing, so when people ask me what genre, I get very confused and say "it's a science fiction setting but..." and ramble off until we all get lost. Now I can say "somewhere between speculative and slipstream" and feel much more comfortable with it. Thank you so much!

...Anthropometry doesn't roll off the tongue so good... it's only slightly mitigated by "The Measure of Man"... well, we'll see!

Oh man, if Empire of the Sun is all you've read, you'd *love* his other stuff (especially look up some of his earlier short stories - send me a PM if you want me to send you some). Empire of the Sun is not really representative of his works at all. He started off in medicine too, wrote a lot of really bent sci-fi that wasn't really sci-fi, had a spell of surrealism, and ended up writing the same story pretty much again and again, but he was very much examining psychological landscapes and human cruelty and survival. I don't know you beyond this thread so it's a hell of an assumption, but if you can handle stuff that's a bit "out there" I think you'd probably like it . . .

(oh, and another vote here for Anthropometry. I'm just jealous I didn't think of that myself.)

Caffeine Spider

I THOUGHT he did a bit of that! Send away, please, I beseech you. I loved the psychological and speculative stuff of the science fiction golden age... some of the most interesting short stories I ever read were from those anthologies, which, sadly, I have difficulty finding these days.

I just found the note I wrote explaining why "Anthropometry" is my project title. I guess I'll place it here. It's a bit TL;DR but I'm not skilled enough to summarise it more than this:

THIS is what I want to convey when somebody asks me what my book is about. "Hermit birdman gets captured and thrown into futuristic society which then falls apart" really does not capture it at all :\ But I have to start somewhere.

I write for a theme, rather than a genre. And then when I have to pick, I usually just pick Young Adult and Youth. I do love writing romance and stuff, but it will nearly always have some serious element attached to it, or something else. I've only written one story that was just plain romance (and even that had a theme about best friends too). I've written a fantasy, but that had a very heavy romance theme too. It sounds like I write just romance, but I don't. It's always for a theme.

2008: Learning To Live Again- WON!!
2009: A Brief Candle

I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned- Unknown

I have no idea what I am writing. I'm not convinced genre actually exists other than as a marketing ploy, and do people actually attempt to write genre? Surely they just write their stories and ... presto, when it's finished, it might fit into a genre, or not. (Not that I ever thought of fanfic as a genre, admittedly. I've written a lot of that. But trying to move past my fanfic habit is one reason I'm doing Nano for the first time. Force myself into originality!)

I can't even get my story to follow my nice, neat outline, let alone fit a category! It veered off somewhere in Chapter Two and certainly has no plans to come back now. The original plan sounded a bit sci-fi, a lot speculative fiction, but what's actually emerging is less clearcut than that. It's about what happens when the world changes, and the entire social pyramid upended, and how we as humans define what is important, and what is not.

What I'd REALLY like to know is how my 2.5 year old has already figured out which questions/demands get an immediate response, and which will be ignored. It's only November 7 and she knows the best way to get me off the computer. There's a deeply significant question for you ...

Happy writing (or perhaps not? Productive torment? Existential crisis?) Whatever you need, may your word count be healthier than mine is looking today ...

Jaq.
***********************
2009: The Storyteller.

If your novel fits into 20 differnet genres, then as far I'm concerened it's not genre at all. Real genre, what I call genre, is formulaic: fan-fic, much fantasy, mills and boon, etc etc. Anything where the market's expectations are very well defined, and one writes to these expectations. This is just my definition. I just wanted to talk to people who were at least trying to do something original - and then the genre labels can administered by others when we're done.

Fanfiction isn't a genre. Fanfiction is using someone else's characters and setting to write a story. It can be one of many genres: sci-fi, fantasy, romance, horror, erotica, and so forth.

Municipal Liaison for Australia and New Zealand :: Melbourne
Moderator for Games, Diversions, and Other Exciting Forms of Procrastination

Also I guess it should be said that in addition to what Lauren said, fanfiction does not necessarily mean "populist, vapid" or... no, I can't use that term so I'll go with "self-indulgent" instead. Though I read very little fan-fiction (except that which some of my friends write), I see no reason that you can't examine transcendental, existential or political issues through the universe and characters of another writer.

It's just that the majority of fanfiction just isn't geared that way. In the same way that about 99% of internet traffic is pornography.

I don't care about the word "genre". I just used it as a topic heading because topic headings have to be short. What I really want to talk about is THE OPPOSITE OF VAPIDITY. Any writing - genre or not - can be vapid. But I didn't start this topic to discuss what is or isn't vapid, but to focus on WHAT IS SUBSTANCE. I like writing which changes who you are, which vicariously gives you life-changing experiences.

Mate, I'm not sure what you're getting at . . . you started a topic wishing to talk to like-minded individuals, yet you appear to be angry that people responded (and if you're not actually angry, you might want to lay off the capitalisations 'cause you're coming across very aggressive).

NaNoWriMo means different things for different people, just like people have different tastes in literature and experience things differently. Every year the forums are filled with similar posts railing against what others choose to do, but what's more important? What everyone else is writing? Or what you have set out to do? Sometimes it's just easier to accept that and focus on your aims and what you want to write within the month rather than get upset that people are out there writing self-indulgent fanfic whilst you're writing the most beautiful, poignant discourse on the human spirit or whatever it is that floats your boat.

Caffeine Spider

Ok, so, I have kept out of this because I was defined out of participating in the beginning, given that I'm writing fanfiction now, but I don't appreciate being called vapid.

I mean, I accept that I'm not writing a great work of literature, and I can't say I especially care that I'm not, because it's my month and I'll do with it what I like, and that is beside the point. What is not beside the point, however, is that you have just implied that what I am writing has no value at all. It has value to me. It allows me to deal with characters who I have come to love, and it makes for an excellent writing excercise. Yeah, for the most part it's just wish fulfilment and shameless smut, but my friends like it, and I like to amuse my friends.

See that word "shameless"? That's what NaNoWriMo should be, and even I, who doesn't take anything seriously, am beginning to feel shamed by this post. That's how I know it's starting to get insulting.

I got nothing.

I don't think you can call anyone's NaNo vapid, even if you would have no interest in reading it. I take vapid to mean un-stimulating and non-challenging, how could anyone describe NaNoWriMo as that. We are writing 50,000 words in 30 days, that in and of itself has substance. I am not particularly proud of my NaNo writing so far, but just the act of writing has been stimulating and challenging. For me, my total audience so far.

This year is my first NaNo and I have loved the fact that everyone had been so supportive, with NO IDEA how good or bad, serious or random my writing is. If you want to talk about the challenges of including existential themes in your NaNo novel I would love to hear what you have to say. But if all you have to say is that you dont like novels that don't do what your doing, then what is the point. NaNo is not an editing and criticism forum, there are groups and internet forums where you can do that, but NaNo is for writing.

‘all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact are imagined’ Benedict Anderson

Every single one of us is going through a life-changing experience just by doing NaNo. Fifty thousand words in a month! Even those who have done it before can learn new things by repeating the experience; making it to 50K faster, exploring a new genre, meeting new people, having new conversations.

Let's ignore the exact genre of what everyone's writing, because genre =/= validity, and just get back onto the main topic of deep and meaningful themes.

Municipal Liaison for Australia and New Zealand :: Melbourne
Moderator for Games, Diversions, and Other Exciting Forms of Procrastination

Not to hijack the thread or be accessory to it, but:

It is my feeling that the original intention of this thread was not to be exclusionary, but rather searching for people with common interests. Of course this does involve some aspects of exclusion because not everybody holds a common interest, particularly when that common interest seems... less common. We've established what some people are interested in, so...

...as Lauren's asking, what themes do you hope to express in your book? Well, I think I've pretty much explained mine already, so I won't blab on about it again except maybe the one sentence version: exploring the definitions common to life and the fundamental motivations to our behaviours in a speculative, futuristic setting.

I really get what you're saying here rsi_writer. I too like to write from the heart. My last few novels took a lot out of me because they were drawn from very deep inside of me.

Perhaps approaching your responses differently could help, since I haven't found any responses here from you that suggest your opinion as to what is substance but instead what is not. People can feel hurt by that, saying that because they've given themselves a genre or five, or have chosen to write their novel in such a way, it means their work is less worthy than any others.

And you are talking to people who are trying something original. If I'm doing fantasy, sci fi, romance and comedy it is still original. Substance comes in many forms and shapes. There are many different perceptions of what substance is. As indicated by others your tone does feel aggressive... because you feel others are misunderstanding what you initially wanted to talk about?

We are absolutely happy to talk about what you originally meant. However I'm sorry you might have to deal with talking to people who write science fiction/fantasy/romance/fan fic, since we all consider our work original, and of substance :)

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Sorry everyone. I was trying to say something, but it seems to be not taken the way I am meaning it. I believe I already said that people should write what they like. And I stand by that. Write what makes you happy, or sad or whatever it is that you want from writing. I wish I'd never used the word genre, or used capitals. It seems to have touched a nerve. So apologies.

"Genre" is a term that is applied by the book stores so they know where on their shelves they should stick the books they want to sell.

I am writing something something considered as sci-fi (specualitve fiction, love that term), because it happens in space, and has space ships. Generalistic and limiting, but hey.

Some people set out to write a genre, others just set out to write. Either or, no matter what you write, it will fall into some sort of genre, purely because thats what is needed to sell.

I've written some Firefly Fanfic, and it was fun. And apparently it was pretty good, as read by people.

And I'd like to say- I love the internets. The flame wars, they warm my hands. :)

Shut up and LOVE it!