Guest blog post from new Fuse client Terry Persun!
As much as the words “literary” and “genre” fit together in my head, I still hear people separating the two modes of fiction writing: character-driven versus plot-driven or slow-paced versus fast-paced. One of the best definitions I’ve heard concerning the differences between literary and genre novels came from a conversation I had with an agent and an editor at a past PNWA Summer Writers’ Conference. She said, “Literary writing, to me, is when the author is more engaged and focused on the language and sentence structure than on the story; whereas genre fiction authors are more focused on story and less on the language.”
While that helps define how literary and genre differ, my confusion at her statement emerged as a question. “Regardless of their differences, shouldn’t writers be concerned with both types of writing?”
I’m an eclectic reader and always have been, picking up any book that was in my childhood house: science fiction and fantasy, nonfiction spiritual books, how-to manuals, science books, you name it. We lived in the country, but I pulled books from our school library on the history of the jet engine as well as the story of Albert Einstein and The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. When my brother was old enough to drive me to the downtown library, I began reading the classics.
My love of reading led me straight to writing, starting with science fiction short stories. I started publishing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, using my degree in engineering and my experience repairing navigations system in the US Air Force as fodder for the technology in my fiction.
As my writing skills grew, I decided to go back to college for a Master’s degree in creative writing. There, we studied word choice, sentence structure, character development, etc. and read a lot of classic literature.
Overall, my early writing experiences made it hard to see the variation of what I read—from science fiction to literary. To me, good writing was good writing.
My first novels were what others might consider literary novels, if we are to take the general assumptions as to what that means. Being told by agents, editors, and other writers that I had to decide what I wanted to write and stick within a genre, I chose mainstream (but what some called literary) while still struggling with the terminology. I love playing with language, but my dilemma was that I was also interested in technology, curious about the world of science, and I still enjoyed writing science fiction.
I’ve always been a bit of a rebel, so when I first decided to write a science fiction novel, I used all the techniques I’d learned over the years. Nowadays I don’t separate literary from genre. Many tried to convince me to stick with one type of writing, but I had to go my own way and work with several small independent publishers to get my work out there. Others who, to me, appear to be doing the same thing I am include Justin Cronin (The Passage), Ben Bova (New Earth), Greg Bear (War Dogs (yeah, it’s military sci-fi, but has literary leanings), and let’s not forget Cormac McCarthy (The Road).
I find that most of the readers I know and have met are eclectic readers just like me. And I’ve decided those are the people I want to write for, the people who are just as strange and explorative as I am. And I believe a lot of people read this way. We can’t all be categorized into a few groups (genres in this case).
So, what I do now is write “literary genre” novels.
Before anyone else snatches up the moniker literary genre, I’m laying claim to it. In a world where everyone—especially publishers—are looking for “the same thing only different,” my novels have a place. Today’s readers are more educated, more curious, and much more well-read than ever. And, those eclectic people are my tribe.
