What Genre Do You Write?
How Pigeonholing Stalls My Creativity
April 2024
by Susan Shepard
What genre do you write? That's a question I hear a lot at conferences, workshops, and any gathering where there are a lot of writers. It's a fair question and I've learned the proper answer. For me, I write young adult fantasy romance. If I'm feeling chatty, I throw in the fact I write new adult fantasy adventures, too.
Humans are notorious for categorizing, boxing, grouping, indexing, and sorting the knowledge we have on any subject. This type of organization is good for many reasons. For one, it helps us keep track of our world. The writing world is no different. Pick any genre and you'll find ten or more sub-genres aimed at trying to keep every book neatly in a box. Not only does this organization make it easier for businesses to keep inventory straight, it helps readers and customers find what they're looking for. Nothing would be more frustrating than going to the romance section of a bookstore and pulling a cookbook off the shelf.
I get it, I really do, and I play by the rules, but confining myself to any box stalls my creativity. I want to share what I did about it.
"to create is freedom. It's an inherent gift that should not be stifled by someone else's rules."
Coming off my release of Curse of the Winter Lord, I was on a publishing high. Reviews were coming in hot and extremely positive, I had readers who wanted to see more from this world even though I had planned it as a stand alone. A new idea of what I wanted to write next came quickly and so did the date on which I would release it. So I started writing. And it flowed, for the most part.
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Up to 60,000 words, that is.
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Then it became a drudgery. I set it a side for a week, went back, felt the same drudgery, and set it aside for two weeks. When four weeks had passed, I knew something was up. Maybe it was writer's block (not something I've dealt with), but I had a feeling it was something deeper. I switched projects and wrote other things, I went for walks, I listened to writing advice, I stopped and worked on editing for someone else's manuscript. My writer's block STAYED.
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This was something else. So I had to do some soul searching.
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What I found was this: my YA fantasy romance was doing better than my first two New Adult medieval fantasies. I had concluded that I had to write YA fantasy from here on out. That's what I had labeled myself as and that's what readers now expected.
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And I couldn't write.
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I was also reminded that humans are born to create. It's in our very natures. We create houses, inventions, stories, art, children, families, jobs, cities, bridges, companies, programs, shops, items, jewelry, music.
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We create. It's what we do.
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Creation is freedom. It's an inherent gift and it should not be stifled by someone else's rules.
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I also had some personal issues going on at the same time. Did that contribute to my writer's block? Absolutely. But recognizing everything working against my creativity helped me to find it again, and this boxing, this idea that I now had to write one thing and one thing only, stalled my creativity and it stalled it bad.
"I don't have to stop creating what's in my heart because of rules. And neither do you."
One of the beauties of living in our modern age is that there are ample opportunities for people to pursue their dreams. In this new world of self-publication, we are free to create whatever story we want. Isn't that a beautiful idea? Sure, there will be those who say that it's important to learn the tropes of the genre you want to write, and there will be those who say you should write what is trending, and there will be those who say you shouldn't switch genres unless you're using a pen name. There are valid points to be made for adhering to these suggestions, but in my book they are just that: suggestions.
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I decided that I didn't have to just write YA fantasy romance books. I could write adult fantasy books too. As long as I make it easy for my readers to find my books by categorizing them in the right way on my website and in bookstores, I don't have to stop creating what's in my heart because of rules. And neither do you. I would argue that when it comes to creativity, know the rules. There is a reason for categories and rules. Understand why they are there. And then break them at will. The person who was genre-defying, or method-defying, or technique-defying, was the person who broke the rules.
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Creating is in our DNA. It is woven into the fabric of our existence and is an inherent gift. Don't stifle it because someone else tells you it's "wrong" or that it's what you "have to do." This type of thinking stalled my creativity and I learned that my creative spirit simply cannot be pigeonholed.
Because it was meant to be free.
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So the next time someone asks me, "What genre do you write?" I may give them the proper answer, and then I may add, "I write whatever my heart tells me."