Genrefication....

 

“Don't classify me, read me. I'm a writer, not a genre.”  -- Carlos Fuentes

 

I've got a past. What I call fondly the good ol' days. I cling to memories of my beginnings as a writer.

Everybody starts out differently. I'd been writing, in one form or another, since childhood. First, stories sketched like comic strip tales. Later, in high school, a friend and I wrote fantasy stories, ala Georgette Heyer, Christopher Lee fanfic, Dark Shadows with Barnabus Collins. Later still, another friend and I traded Rudolph Valentino stories. We were hopeless Valentino fans and we blissfully lost ourselves in writing scenarios in which we, of course, were his lovers.

Then one night I dreamed about Russell Crowe! So Valentino got tossed to the side of the road in favor of swarthy Maximus in my new Gladiator fantasy.

Then...then...I had a relentless drive to actually...write. A real story, as in submitting it. It was going to be shocking, it was going to be a best seller. I was going to be famous.

So I took off on a new journey with a new destination. FAME.

Funny thing, though, as illustrious and famed as I planned to be, I still wrote for fun. It was fun.

What more could there be to this writing gig, after all? One simply wrote a story, thumbed through a list of agents, then simply plunked the manuscript into the mail.

I'd like this to be published, please.

The lucky agent, all a-flutter at the most magnificent manuscript they'd ever received, would hasten to find me a publishing house and there it would be. In like Flynn. I would soon be famous.

Please.

Are you going to make me humiliate myself by telling you the outcome to that dream?

Here's the thing, though. It was so much fun. I was so new, so green. So full of hope. I was doing something I loved, and, joy of joys, it was going to make me rich and make me famous. God, how I loved it.

My first serious stab at writing was a Mafia story. It was, at first glance, what is known in the publishing world as a 'hetero' romance or a male/female romance, a story between a man and a woman.

I introduced a gay couple as supporting characters. The genre bible said, this still falls into male/female romance. Whew. So I still had that genre thing on track, that gave me a good insight into where I could publish. Which publishers accepted what, and all that jazz. 

Oh, but one thing.

It is still male/female romance unless the gay couple have on-screen sex.

Uh-oh.

Okay, they do have sex on the page.

So, does that mean...?

Oh, that's different.

You've now ventured over into mainstream. It can no longer be a hetero romance if there is an other-than-heterosexual sex scene or scenes in the story.

Very well, so I'll start looking for a publisher who...

Now I could take the gay characters out of the story, the rules suggest.

Nah, I really like these guys, couldn't I just...?

Not in this story, and still call it a hetero romance. Now, you could perhaps put them in their own story? Then that would be classified as male/male romance. Another genre.

But they belong in the story.

Then no sex from them, and everything will fine. Unless, of course, you go mainstream.

So, that story was shelved for a while. I did try to extract the gay characters and give them their own vehicle. But you know how characters are. The boys had none of that. So, hell. Nobody gets a story. Right?

Mainstream, remember?

Now this is too much of a headache. I'll just come back to them later.

On to another story. My first published story (under my C. Zampa pen name), CANDY G. Piece of cake. Two men in a two-man romance. Male/male romance. That was easy! Gender-ising, that is.

But there I am again. My current story is just the opposite. A story of two gay men with a woman in the cast, a woman who has a huge point of view in the story. She's the soon-to-be ex-wife of one of the characters.

This time, it's the woman's presence raising the flags.

She is allowed, but no on-screen sex scenes for her.

Yes, very well. I can manage that. The sex between her and her husband isn't crucial to the story anyway. Or is it? I must decide if it's important, based on genre guidelines, not by on how important the sexual changes are in the relationship.

So it is still a male/male romance.

At this point, I'm confused.

The bottom line? Life is not compartmentalized by genres. Real-life drama is a big mix of everything. Straight people and gay people interact in real life.

But, to keep in perfect genre-fication, we have to pretend that one of the genders does not really have sex. Well, I take that back. They can have it, just don't tell about it. It'll just be their little secret.

Silly as it is, I have friends who write male/male fiction who act like they'll get cooties if they look at pictures of straight couples kissing. And, vice versa,  author  who do the same if male/male pictures are posted. Genre, baby, genre. (In truth, it's bias and prejudice, but that's another, much bigger issue). Never the twain shall meet in certain genres. 

For me, personally, sex is sex. If it fits a character, any character, in the book, it belongs. If it is crucial to the story, if it's not just thrown in as sex for sex's sake. It doesn't turn me off, doesn't offend me. Others might not feel the same, though, and they are completely right in their own feelings. That's the beautiful part of human nature. We are all different, and it should be okay that way.

I'm not complaining about these guidelines. They are there for specific reasons, and I understand them completely. I adhere to them.

But...But...

I do miss the early days when I just wrote my heart away, beautiful, no-genre writing, everybody all in the same story, gay, straight, sex, no sex. Everybody had their place in my book. It was so simple, so pure. And fun.

I don't resent the way it actually is, these genre guidelines. I just miss the absence of inhibition from those good old days. When I just wrote without having to fit a genre, but I wrote to the heart of the story, whatever that heart might be.

“My favorite genre is Beautifully Written Books of Any Genre. Could we make that a genre?”  - Kristin Cashore

 

 

 

Wait! Before You Read That Book.....

 

It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something. ~Ornette Coleman

On a publisher’s loop once, a fellow author mentioned that F. Scott Fitzgerald was known to have said he wished he could get his books back so he could rewrite them.

I immediately connected with that sentiment.

No, I only have one newly published book out there in Bookland; but, even with that one book, I sometimes feel ‘writer’s remorse’ (I don’t think there IS such a term as ‘writer’s remorse’, but it seems to fit me so well, I’ll coin it myself).

I’m probably the only author on the planet who literally cringes every time a potential buyer comments to me, I’m just getting ready to download your book!

I have to bite my tongue to stifle the advance apologies chomping at the bits to spew—before you DO read it, let me warn you—let me tell you ahead of time, you might think it’s a ‘silly plot’—warning, warning—read at your own risk!

I’m not saying my book is bad. It isn’t bad at all. It is what it is. Or at least I don’t think so. Some may love it, some may like it, some may feel so-so about it.

And some loathe it. But that is true for any book.

What I am saying is that I’m the first to acknowledge that this book—my first published work in several years—has flaws that I can see.

What I am saying is that all my writing has flaws.

What I am saying is that just because I’ve sent this book out the door does not mean I’ve ‘arrived’ at my pinnacle writing experience.

One book—a hundred books—does not the perfect writer make.

This all could seem terribly hopeless, couldn’t it? Well, hell, Vastine, why even keep trying? I mean, if you’re going to just keep messing up, if you’re never going to get it perfect, what’s the point? How discouraging!

Not so, my friend. Not only am I not discouraged, I am ecstatic. I can see my mistakes.

I’ve been fortunate. Somehow, I’ve luckily found a multitude of friends and supporters in the writing community who work with me. But they don’t just work with me. They push me. They push me hard. They push me so hard sometimes I feel like Lucy on the ballet episode—you know the one with the tough instructor who perpetually snapped her baton at the bumbling Lucy?

My teachers haven’t been tender. They haven’t been afraid to tell me what I’m doing wrong. Although they have praised my strengths, they haven’t been easy on my weaknesses. And I have been tempted to snarl at them when they point out an imperfection in my perfect work-in-progress.

But none of my mentors—not even one—will hesitate to tell you that I never balk at their advice. As far as pointers that can make my story stronger, get more bang for the buck with tightening, structure, etc.? I'd be silly not to listen. My mentors will tell you I grab help and run with it, feast on it with greedy passion. Sometimes I cherish the negatives because I know, I just know from experience, they can almost always be turned into positives. They have their own beautiful power.

To find your pristine manuscript isn’t so flawless after all…well, it stings. But I’d rather feel the sting now—as I’m writing the manuscript—and learn to correct my mistakes than to feel the much bigger bites of the readers who catch my blunders.

Winston Churchill said I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.

Like I said, I’m lucky.

Of course I wince at first upon hearing my errors. The opposite end of that spectrum, though, is the unfortunate author who either has not had the opportunity to learn or who does have the chance but refuses to accept they do have weaknesses, even when those more experienced have tried to point them out and help them improve. To ignore help will keep them from growing. Even worse, to think they don’t need help will stunt their writing growth completely.

An unknown author said, Things could be worse. Suppose your errors were counted and published every day, like those of a baseball player.

And that’s just it. By sending our writing out to the public, we are sending our errors to be counted. So, like the ball player, it’s in our best interest to practice, to listen to the experienced ones who try to help us, to learn from our own experience, to be grateful that we have the means to sharpen our skills.

In order to do all the above, we have to know and accept that we are always going to make mistakes. We aren’t going to reach that perfect moment in our writing when we know everything.

Harry Truman said, It's what you learn after you know it all that counts.

Another unknown author said—and I love this—Experience is what causes a person to make new mistakes instead of old ones.

That’s the beauty of it all. In writing, as with everything else in life, we do make mistakes. And, as everything else, we grow from them if we use them as valuable learning tools instead of gauges of failure.

Some time ago I stumbled on an excerpt of a book. The short piece I read was so laden with mistakes and bad writing I actually found it comical. But the tragic part? It wasn’t supposed to be comedy.

My first—and lingering thought—was didn’t this person have any one to help them, to mentor them? How sad that was to me to think.

But, then, my thought progressed to, what if this person DID have a mentor who tried to help them and they just knew more than the person offering the advice? That would have been the ultimate tragedy. Because that book is now out there with all its errors to be counted. And if an inexperienced eye like mine could even trip all over the mistakes and horrific writing, think how it will bode when an experienced eye zeroes in on it?

Falling prey to critical eyes is going to happen to all writers. It’s part of the game. But when my writing does fall victim to dissection, at least I’ll know in my heart the faults that get counted aren’t there because of my refusal to have opened my mind to learning.

 

Leader of the Pack and All That Jazz....

Alessandro Gassmann

I want to see these bad, bad, bad, bad men come to grips with their humanity. ----James Ellroy

 

He entered the joint.

Like sharks gliding silent in the deep, we smelled fresh new talent. Every female gaze, including mine, immediately zoomed in on him.

The guys knew immediately—just male instinct, I suppose—he was going to be a threat, he was going to be trouble with a capital “T”. They knew he was competition because his kind always was.

Louie. His name was Louie. He wasn’t very tall. Oh, hell, he was short. Not even particularly handsome. Waves of red hair, freckles. Not the average Joe we dames usually went for. But something about the way Louie wore his jeans and white T-shirt, something in his cocky grin, the savvy glint in his green eyes shouted bad boy. Very good bad boy.

For me, it was love at first sight. Red-headed Louie—I don’t even remember his last name—stole my heart.

Louie, the predecessor to the Fonz, the copper haired Brando of Red Bluff Elementary. The newly anointed king of Mrs. Smallwood’s second grade class.

One Friday night at Jackson’s Skating Rink, bad boy Louie asked me to skate with him and—there, with the rink dim except for the romantic multi-colored lights dancing over the walls and floor—I lost my heart to him.

And thus, this second grader, wearing my blue rhinestone trimmed glasses and pigtails, began my love affair with bad boys.

My weakness in fiction—films, books, to read AND to write—are dangerous men. In my opinion, Scarlett O’Hara could have saved herself so much time and grief had she only shared my taste in the wicked pleasures of rakes like Rhett Butler instead of boring ol’, dry-as-toast Ashley Wilkes.

Hey, let me at the script for Peter Pan, and I’ll free Captain Hook and toss silly Pan to the giant crocodile. I shiver and fantasize about Lucius Malfoy in the Harry what’s-his-name film. You can have your Mel Gibson in The Patriot. Give me Col. William Tavington. 

In the fiction world, are these bad asses REALLY…well…bad? Or are they just flawed? Are they tormented souls who, as James Ellroy suggests, we want to force to come to grips with their humanity through our writing?

Are we literary co-dependents where our lotharios, mob guys, street-wise punks, highwaymen and pirates are concerned, with an unconscious need to reform them?

In true, everyday life, are these Robert Mitchum/James Dean types really what our hearts desire? Would that kind of guy REALLY make us happy, or have we romanticized them?

Robert Mitchum

If we DO lust for these menaces-in-men’s-bodies, even in our non-fictional world, what is their allure? Is it our own unrequited dream of living on the edge, flirting with danger, being the sensuous yet pure beacon on his dark, tortured sea?

Remember the sixties' song, Leader of the Pack? Part of the lyrics, I think, symbolized a common conception of these misunderstood rascals: They told me us was bad, but we knew he was sad. Get the picture? the crooner asked. Yes, we see, they replied. And, because he was sad, that’s why, she says, she fell for the leader of the pack.

Powerful stuff these scoundrels have, the angst angle. Is there room in our hearts for the guys from the right side of town, the guys who aren't sad and tormented?

Just as little Louie was an automatic threat to the second grade male population—by simply by being Louie—are naughty boys a threat to the real-life guys in white hats?

In one of my favorite films, Crossing Delancey, the heroine apologetically announces to the hero, “You’re such a nice guy.” His response? So pitiful, yet so true-to life—he shudders and says, “Oh, what a thing to say!” Bless his heart! She did not mean it as a compliment, and he knew it. In the film, she preferred the womanizing anti-hero, an arrogant ass of an author with an ego the size of New York City. Of course, in the end, our good guy won out, but it was a continuous, painful, uphill battle for him.

Peter Riegert and Amy Irving, "Crossing Delancey"

Crossing Delancey may be a fictional story, but it personified a true state of many female psyches. Even mine. I related to the heroine. I, too, dig that wicked allure, that I’m going to break your heart and you’re going to beg me for more attraction which is old as time, still alive and well.

Do bad boys really reform for us? Or do we write them because it’s our only way to mold them into the sexy-attentive-obsessively passionate-romantic-good-and-bad-at-the-same-time-always-handsome lovers we want them to be?

Russell Crowe said, and I thought this was very interesting, I like villains because there's something so attractive about a committed person - they have a plan, an ideology, no matter how twisted. They're motivated.

 Is that what it boils down to? Are we attracted to something as simple as their…commitment to their plan? The powerful drive in these bad boys, whether it’s evil, just a little mean or just plain tortured?