Genre by any other name…

Hi, my name is Cindy Skaggs, and I write genre fiction.

As ridiculous as it appears to readers, this kind of genre-as-vice mentality is an ongoing battle. Having worked in a large public library system while I finished my education, I know for a fact that librarians don’t care where something is shelved except as a means to connect reader to book. Booksellers, similarly, do not quantify or judge. That has not been my experience in academics.

The day I graduated with an MFA, my advisor told me that I would never be an academic. I was on pain meds for kidney stones at the time, and I didn’t take his assessment well. In point of fact, he hit a nerve, both professionally (I’ll never earn professor rank or pay) and emotionally (yet another rejection). But business-wise, I’m good, because the book market is democratic.

Readers like genre fiction. Romance fiction is a billion-dollar industry. Mystery is right behind it. Literary fiction? Not so much. As an industry insider said during a recent writing conference, “I deposited $90,000 last month. They can think what they want.”

But why/where/how did the writing divide begin? Ursula K. Le Guin, acclaimed writer of science fiction and fantasy, believes that the fiction hierarchy, with a still undefined “literary fiction” at the pinnacle and genres “spaced out in rapidly descending order of inferiority,” is an outdated system of judgment that “promotes ignorance and arrogance.” She continues in her article “Genre: A word only a Frenchman could love”:

“It has seriously deranged the teaching and criticism of fiction for decades by short-circuiting useful critical description, comparison, and assessment. It condones imbecilities on the order of, ‘If it’s science fiction, it can’t be good; if it’s good, it can’t be science fiction.’”

​Yet the stereotypes and judgment persist. I studied craft in the same way as my fellow MFA cohort, but I had to fight the bias against genre. The first year of my MFA, my first traditionally published book was released. I hid it from fellow students and teachers for fear of judgment. I sat in on a workshop where a panel of instructors blasted “trash” like sci-fi and romance. YA writers were discouraged from writing YA. This was so counter to my experience with my MA program that I was in shock.

And it didn’t end with the instructors. People in my workshop wanted to make sure we knew their submission wasn’t romantic “trash.” I grew a very thick skin. And I slowly learned my second-class place in the literary world.

I believe we can write well, using the techniques we study in classic literature and applying them to our favored genre (if we must label). I entered the MFA program to become a stronger writer, and I believe I achieved that goal, but only through serious literary street fighting. I had to prove my stuff wasn’t romance. I had to change everything from character names to plot elements because they were too “romance,” and “we” (Who is this “we” they speak of?) should avoid that.

Did the MFA make me a stronger writer? Absolutely.

Was it handled in a way that nurtured the writing spirit? Absolutely not. The only reason I survived was my Skaggs family hard-headedness. In addition to my thesis project, I wrote six books, a novella, and several creative nonfiction essays while I was in the program. Only a few knew of my prolific publication schedule—and only one commended me for it.

Is literary fiction that much better? I don’t think so. Nor do I believe it is worse. I continue to believe any genre of writing (to include literary fiction) can be good writing, but in my heart, I’m a genre writer. Like Le Guin, “[i]t’s not a matter for me of stooping to an … amusing bit of slumming in the kiddie-lit ghetto or the sci-fi gutter. I live there, in the ghettos and gutters. I am a street person of the city of fiction.”

Toward the end of her article, LeGuin comes to this conclusion: “All judgment of a category of literature as inherently superior or inferior is tripe.” I agree, but it took me nearly a year to recover creatively because I did, for a time, let judgment impact the writing space in my head.

I also didn’t give up on academics. I am a full-time English professor in addition to teaching creative writing in an online MFA program that gets the connection of all writing. I have students who write YA, romance, and speculative fiction. We study classic and contemporary works of fiction. Not one student has volunteered their allegiance to literary fiction. That’s okay. If they “come out” as literary writers later in the semester, I’ll accept them for who they are.

 

Cindy Skaggs is the author of seven published romantic suspense novels, including the Untouchables trilogy and a novella for Entangled Publishing and the Team Fear series. Her essays have appeared in Progenitor Art & Literary Review, Soundings, Wanderlust Journal, and the Fredericksburg Literary Art Review. She holds an MFA in creative writing, three jobs, two kids, and more pets than she can possibly handle. Find her as Cindy Skaggs, Writer on Facebook, @CLSkaggs on Twitter, or www.CSkaggs.com to sign up for her newsletter.