An Open Letter to Writers

I started this at least six months ago and have tinkered with it off and on. I haven't posted it before now because I didn't want to offend anyone -- I still don't want to offend, but today I feel a need for content, and this is available, so...

I know many of you obsess about genre categorization, and how your works -- and other works which you may or may not like or consider worthy -- fit into the larger world of literature. I also know that, for many of you, having your book in precisely the right pigeonhole is vital. And, of course, writers are quite fond of making up new genres to fit their own idiosyncrasies; nearly every seriously committed writer thinks that what she is doing is central and vital to whatever she thinks of as the central purpose of fiction.

Unfortunately, none of that actually matters: genre isn't about you. It's not about writers at all. Genre categories are for readers, and driven by readers. Those of us in publishing try to keep track of what those readers want, like and are looking for, but, even in the best of times, that's like trying to hit a moving target -- no, actually, it's like trying to aim a shotgun at a million independently moving targets, and hit enough of them to pay for the powder and shot. That's why we keep making up new names for subgenres and hybrid genres; we want to figure out what the readers are responding to, and define it well enough so that we can actually recognize it if it comes through our door again. (And, far too much of the time, what we think the readers want is just some superficial stuff that isn't what's really important at all.)

All writers can do is to write the stories they have in them. I'm not telling you folks to stop obsessing about this -- telling a writer to stop obsessing is like telling a normal person not to think of a pink elephant -- but, instead, to tell those stories your way, and not worry about what they're called. Good luck...and don't think about that pink elephant.