I elected not to attend the big annual writing
conference this year because I’m tired of being harped at about genre. In
today’s market, the universal “they” who hold the steering wheel tell me that
genre fiction must be able to be trimmed, tightened, and forced into very
particular parameters. The result is the literary equivalent of prefab cheese
slice product.
Aren’t we as readers smarter than this? Yes. Don’t
we deserve better? Yes. I don’t believe genre fiction should be so limited. If
fiction is art, I believe our imaginations should be able to test the barriers
that divide the genres.
It has taken a while, because the change has happened slowly, but all of the sudden I have noticed that books are getting more compact in time frame. Used to, you would have a saga that went on for months, if not years. Now everything happens in a matter of days. So unrealistic! Come on agents and publishing companies, we are not stupid! Don't dumb down our books as you have our schools!
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