Genre Writing and Identity

Hi, I’m the author of this month’s Turtleduck story, “Lonesome Hearts”. Cool, right? There’s just one problem. My bio says I write science fiction and fantasy (also known as speculative fiction). I identify as a genre writer. So why isn’t this story speculative fiction?

The original idea for the story was to combine folk music and fantasy. I wasn’t sure what the fantasy element was going to be, but I knew I was aiming for a story in the tradition of the wonderful anthology The Horns of Elfland and the music-related portions of Elizabeth Bear’s beautiful Blood and Iron. When I started writing, I had a strong sense of place and character, an idea of the situation, and a vague sense of the plot. I wrote half the story and still no fantasy element had shown up.

 

Finally I had an epiphany. Maybe the story didn’t need one. Maybe it was a – *gasp* – realist story.

Why did this idea take so long to hit me? Firstly, I hadn’t written a non-speculative story since my days as a creative writing major in university, where non-literary writing was generally discouraged. Secondly, there’s a gap between genre and non-genre writers. We identify as members of a community. Overlap exists, of course – some writers work in multiple areas, some speculative works are more literary than others, some literary works use speculative fiction tropes. But writers generally find a niche and stay there.

I thought I had found my niche. I was very comfortable writing speculative fiction. Most of my favorite books are speculative fiction. To write a story that I expected to be fantasy and have it turn out to be realist was a shock to my identity as a writer.

Yet I had often enjoyed non-genre fiction as a reader, and learned from it as a writer. I already knew that speculative fiction has more character depth, more insight into the human condition, more carefully wrought prose than it is often given credit for having – that the gap wasn’t as big as it sometimes appears.

On reflection, I realized that “Lonesome Hearts” wasn’t so different from the stories I was used to writing. There’s a life-and-death situation propelling the plot, just as in my other stories. The characters are shaped by their backgrounds and struggle to overcome their pasts. The themes are of loss and hope. The setting is central to the story and requires just as much work to convey to the reader as a completely made-up setting does.

My sense of myself as a writer has expanded, and that can only enrich my writing, no matter what the genre. Speculative fiction will always be my first and greatest love, but I’m turning back to it with fresh eyes and a new perspective.

Hi, I’m a genre writer. Sometimes I write other things. I hope you like all of them.

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