The week of Genre agony
“I think sometimes genre is a code word to keep us in our place as artists” - Beyonce
The editing phase of the book is an interesting phase. It feels as though I’m sitting in a helicopter surveying everything I’ve done in the past. In the meantime, my past self who has written the book keeps showing up with post-it notes with all the unmade decisions I had successfully postponed.
And of the first decisions I managed to postpone, was the agony of Genre. This is a very simple question that I will be asked as I submit the book for publishing - Where does your book belong on the shelves?
I briefly stuck my manuscript into the Young Adult Fantasy Genre when I first started writing. But unless I make hard structural changes within, it won’t exactly fit into this box.
As a 10 year old, after listening to the story of a famous Indian epic, I still remember asking the question, “How did he have a Vimana (an aeroplane), if it was set in an ancient times?”
And now, my novel which also has a Vimana in it for key scenes, also won’t fit neatly into a pure fantasy “magic” box. There is a sci-fi bend in it. Unless, I do some magic like Harry potter and convert a Vimana into some magical flying carriage.
Genre-bends aren’t recommended for debut novels. Stick to simplicity is the usual advice given to newbie authors like me. And here I was, breaking the rules very early on.
So this week, thanks to the help of Beyonce’s grammy speech I was finally able to come to peace with agony of the Genre question.
I’m going to write the book as me, and in the end, I’m sure it will fall into a genre category. Otherwise, I’ll invent a genre category for it and I hope you will still read it anyway.