Recently I filled out an application – I guess one would call it more a questionnaire than an application, really – to contribute to an as of yet unnamed online magazine. For those of you who know that this very morning I submitted a query to Write Anything to become a regular columnist, no, it wasn’t Write Anything.
First on the list was my name and the pseudonym I would like to be published as. I found this one amusing as it was one, the very first question and two, I have a long history of using aliases. I have anonymous e-mail addresses and even regular mail correspondence where I use the names Jim Beam and Jack Daniels. I’ve often wondered if anyone has ever looked at the names and what their reaction might be. To be honest, I’ve thought of using a pseudonym in my writing career, but decided against it. I want my work to be credited to me, not one of my fictional characters. Although part of me still thinks it would be cool to have an alter-ego and write completely opposite the way I do now. I left that line blank and decided to live up to the criticism, good or bad.
When asked how long I had been writing, I didn’t even have to stop and mull it over. Seeing as how I just wrote a post about this very subject a few days ago, I already knew the answer. I couldn’t put down briefly in high school, again in college, a ten year break, and started again two years ago. That wouldn’t fly. I just put fifteen years and left it at that. Who’s to know anyway? Right?
The genre question is what really got me. I have always strived to be a horror writer, but as I continue to evolve and the more I look to my influence in Stephen King, I find I cannot commit myself to just one genre. As are his stories, mine tend to cross a multitude of genres. I may start a story off as a romance, but it will quickly turn to science fiction, take a quick detour to fantasy, and end up at horror. Staying in one genre, honestly and truly, bores me. If I were to write a story and banish it to one little corner of the genre room, I wouldn’t even finish. And I know this because I’ve tried. Every single story I’ve ever started with the intent of sticking to one genre I have never finished.
I didn’t know how to fill out that last question. Should I list all genres known to man? Should I show my smartass side and write a little of everything? Should I suck it up and relegate myself to being called a horror writer? Should I just leave it blank? What should I do? For what it’s worth, I left it blank.
I did get a reply e-mail stating that they received my “application that was more a questionnaire than an application” and they would be contacting me shortly. It’s been a week now and I am starting to wonder if I will hear from them. I can see some guy sitting at a desk in a dimly lit room scratching his head, wondering why I didn’t fill out the genre line. I imagine him going to my website and being blown away by the samples of writing that I have on it. But then I remember that my name doesn’t begin with Stephen King or J.K. Rowling and I snap out of it.
In the meantime I’ll do what I do best: find other things to worry about.
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If it were me filling out that questionable / application, I think it would have looked similar. The pseudonym field would have been left blank, as would the genre field.
“What genre do you write in” seems like a very simple question. Having pondered it for the past few minutes, I still have no idea what genre my writing would typically fall in. I’m like you in the sense that I think I would get bored if I tried to stick to a cut and dry definition of one genre.
When it comes to novels, the bulk of my reading falls in the Fantasy genre. I can read page after page of magic in a medieval setting, but I struggle to write it. I suppose if I focused more on short stories and not trying to create an epic tale, I would find the genre much more manageable (in a writing sense). I suppose the beauty of short stories is that an author can bounce around and simply write whatever strikes their fancy at that given moment.
Good luck with the application.
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