Twisting In The Wind - Writing Outside The Box 7/29/2009 3:56:34 AM
I had a great talk with my agent yesterday afternoon about another manuscript (ms) of mine she’s going to take on once I make some necessary changes. It’s a remote viewer conspiracy tale, and is a “prequel” of sorts to my Sleepwalkers novel (see links below). Anyway, we also had a little talk--at my initiation--about how to define my writing. By this I mean, I am currently branding myself as a gritty paranormal (NOT vampires, not that there’s anything wrong with them...) fiction writer. She said, yes, my writing IS gritty, but she wouldn’t exactly call it “paranormal.” It’s MORE than “paranormal.”
“Paraparanormal” I asked?
“Nooo...,” she said, laughing.
“Well, okay, than, how would you define me?”
“You write mind-twisting books. Thinking books. You don’t fit into a little niche. You’re totally different...you take concepts and you twist them and write outside the box.”
I nodded on the other side of the phone. Yes, I thought to myself, I liked what she had to say...a LOT.
It’s not that I’m looking so much for validation, but I wanted to see another’s viewpoint of my work. Someone who’s read the best of my efforts, understands reading and writing and the publishing industry. My agent’s read three of my novel mss, so--besides me--has the best understanding of my work of anybody else on this planet. I already know I don’t fit into any easily defined container, and that has always been a problem in selling my mss...but you see, now I have someone who also KNOWS this and isn’t bothered nor in the least bit intimidated by it. I have an industry champion. And I REALLY liked what she had to say about my writing, because, yes, that IS what I’ve always felt about my efforts. I’ve always strove to GET PEOPLE TO THINK. Yes, I love to entertain, I really do, but I also love to get people to think obtusely about all manner of things; to show a different perspective on life and all its glory. That’s why I wrote my UFO conspiracy, supernatural murder mystery, and remote viewer conspiracy mss. I LOVE to mess around with the imagination and LOVE to play with concepts. To entertain. My work does have a certain degree of complexity to it, sure, but it’s one in which I feel others can get caught up in, as well, and is not just a case of mental masturbation. I do confess, however, that it is also a way in which I try to make sense of the world and my own life. In which I work out issues for myself...issues, I know, others must also have, because, after all and much to everyone’s amusement, yes, I am human (as far as you know), and if I can think of these kinds of things, then others do, too. People are people, no matter what clothes they wear, what language they speak, and what color pigments their flesh. We really are all much the same in many ways. And since the oft-quoted publishing line of “it’s all been done before” constantly rankles those of us in the literary trenches, then my work definitely fits the dictum of “Yes--so write about it in a DIFFERENT way!”
I really liked what my agent had to say about me.
I write outside the box.
Yeah, I like that a lot.
Please do catch my interview, by Wendy Burt, tomorrow (see link below). It was an online interview, and I had a lot of fun answering her questions. You’ll be certain to find out even more about me (can you handle it?) and my writing! I thank you in advance for stopping by!
