{"id":856,"date":"2008-09-15T13:06:16","date_gmt":"2008-09-15T17:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=856"},"modified":"2008-09-15T13:06:16","modified_gmt":"2008-09-15T17:06:16","slug":"upsetting-the-apple-cart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2008\/09\/upsetting-the-apple-cart\/","title":{"rendered":"Upsetting the Apple Cart"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m going to go out on a limb here and…<\/p>\n

…no, I’m not<\/em> going to write a post about posts which begin with long-dead metaphors, posts whose authors should really know better. Though I, or somebody, probably should.<\/p>\n

What I am going to say is possibly heretical and, well, possibly something I should keep my mouth shut about, since I care about my putative writing career. But it’s been driving me crazy — a real professional and perhaps even personal dilemma.<\/p>\n

One of the first pieces of advice you get from agents, published authors, writing workshops, writers’ guides, and so on, is that you must picture where in the bookstore your book will be shelved. This becomes, then, your genre. Fiction’s got mystery, romance, SF\/fantasy, young adult (YA), so on and so forth; and then non-fiction too is all over the map — biography, history, true crime, humor (hey, I didn’t make up these categories!), travel, reference…<\/p>\n

(Above all else, the advice goes, if you’re serious about your writing career, avoid the dreaded mid-list\/mainstream classification<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

Where will your book come to rest?<\/em> they all want to know. Where do you belong?<\/em><\/p>\n

Actually, it’s not such questions per se which are problematical. You do need to have some sense of how to explain your work — especially to potential agents, editors, even casual readers — and providing the genre helps accomplish that, even before you’ve offered details.<\/p>\n

Where problems do come in is when you select a genre in advance, before a book is even written — despite your own proclivities.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m going to drop the second person here. This isn’t about you. This is (sorry) about me<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Here’s my dilemma:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. My reading tends to sprawl all over the place. I like mysteries and thrillers, an occasional SF\/F title, humor, graphic novels, non-fiction of various sorts (essays, science & nature, politics…). And I also read a pretty fair amount of “literary”\/mainstream\/commercial\/unclassifiable fiction — like Michael Chabon’s stuff; like The Time Traveler’s Wife<\/em>; like Richard Powers’s novels…<\/li>\n
  2. The short fiction I’ve written seldom places action on a pedestal above character, setting, “theme,” style… In short, the short fiction I’ve written by choice<\/em>, left to my own devices, doesn’t fit into a single niche.<\/li>\n
  3. My “big book,” which I’ve alluded to here and there, falls into no easy genre or another. If forced, right now, I might classify it as something like “aggressively mainstream.” It’s the book I think I was really “meant” to write (whatever that means) — the one which will honestly break my heart if I die with it unpublished.<\/li>\n
  4. A careful, maybe even careless reader of this blog would observe that I’ve published one novel, a mystery, and that I’ve recently readied for submission a second, loosely classified as a political thriller (with SF and humorous overtones).<\/li>\n
  5. …so then, said reader might reasonably wonder: Given my reading preferences, why am I writing mysteries and political thrillers — two genres which, maybe above all others, assert the primacy of plot and action?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Hence the dilemma.<\/p>\n

    I’ve always assumed Merry-Go-Round<\/em> to be the first of a series. With this in mind — and the first book in the can, so to speak (dead metaphors again!) — I’ve always assumed the next book would be the sequel. (I’ve even begun to sketch it out, and have written a few paragraphs.)<\/p>\n

    But you know what? I’m getting no younger. And then I read this post<\/a> over on Moonrat’s Editorial Ass blog a couple weeks ago, where she says:<\/p>\n

    I do think that if possible you shouldn’t work on the next book in your series. I have a number of reasons, but I’ll list the biggies:<\/p>\n

    1) If an agent decides to work with you (or, later, an editor) on the condition that you do some certain edits, they might drive your first book in developmental directions that differ from or outgrow the second installment you’ve already spent time on.<\/p>\n

    2) In the event (God forbid) you don’t end up placing the book you’re submitting right now, you’ll have two [unsold] books in the same series instead of a different, unrelated book that you can pitch separately. However, if you write a different book, you might be able to place THAT one, and then come back later when you’re famous and reputable and place the first one.<\/p>\n

    …yeah, I would take up an entirely different project to distract you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    God bless Moonrat. She could’ve been talking to me<\/em>. It’s like I was just waiting for someone to give me permission, y’know?<\/p>\n

    I’ve gone back to working on the Big Book now. It’s been a few years since I last looked at it, so it’s kind of refreshing to see how much<\/em> there is in it: not thrills and chills, no, but layers<\/em> of stuff, real and imagined, and also imaginary versions of real places and things.<\/p>\n

    My head’s clear. Yes, I worry about the career implications. (And so saying, I haven’t withdrawn Merry-Go-Round<\/em> from circulation.) But it makes all the difference in the world — to me — to work on a book I want <\/em>to work on, shelving considerations be damned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’m going to go out on a limb here and… …no, I’m not going to write a post about posts which begin with long-dead metaphors, posts whose authors should really know better. Though I, or somebody, probably should. What I am going to say is possibly heretical and, well, possibly something I should keep my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[37,5,36,105,209,372],"tags":[140,456,457],"class_list":{"0":"post-856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-onlineworld","7":"category-06_writing","8":"category-reading","9":"category-short-fiction","10":"category-the-business","11":"category-style-and-craft","12":"tag-genres","13":"tag-writing-career-management","14":"tag-the-big-book","15":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-dO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":867,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856\/revisions\/867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}