One thing that really got and still gets on my nerves is how much flak genre writers get. I did not know that they are, for some reason, lesser writers than any others. Now I have always read genre but I have also read the high-bow lit and non-fiction, as my book review readers know, I read everything under the sun. But genre is where my heart is. I do not have some great story about reading Dune or any other of the classics that won me to genre more of I just read what was interesting and genre is interesting. And for some reason I have always just written genre maybe because adding fireballs to anything just makes it better.
Now the reason that I believe genre is important because there is where we talk about our issues. Genre is where we can as a people group talk about the scary things in life. Think about it. Where do we talk about race, gender, or any unfairness in life? We do it in genre because if we try to talk about in 'real life' it is too scary because it is real. But if we put it in space or riding dragons then it is okay because it is not real. We are not talking about race or gender or any real life problem because it is in space. Or about elves or anything that makes it not real. I do not know what is so magical about making a real problem not real because it is in a not real setting but it works. I know that problems are scary and they are big and they are really more than one person can handle or fix but I just do not get the sideways look as changing. But it works. Suddenly we can talk about real problems that we have a world-wide people.
I realize that not all genre does this. Sometimes the elves are just elves but that does not change what genre has done for us as a whole. I write this knowing that I have never written about any of those important problems and I think that most people have not either. That does not make their work any less. Now the reason that fine literature looks down on genre and its writers, I think, is this- because they sale. The plots are not unusually groundbreaking, the writing is not bad but not up high-brow standards, but for some reason it sales. That is the greatest annoyance to those who write fine lit and they just do not get it. This is just my opinion so take it for it is worth but genre writers are the ones who are not afraid to talk about the bad things in our world and how we can deal with them. Thanks for reading and see you next week.
That's a good post.
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