Gak! Fr@!g! Sh*g!
That’s basically my reaction to marketing. Any kind of marketing. But especially the stuff I do am supposed to do to sell my writing.
I have been reading about branding. What is this shit? I am not a tin of peas! Branding is when you take a product there are billions of similars of and stick some sort of ‘identity’ on top. A label.
The thing is, creativity IS the thing. It shouldn’t need a label, or an author a brand. Writing is what it is. There are already genres enough to confine and constrict – yes, they can and do. People struggle to hashtag their novels or find suitable keywords to fit if their novel crosses genres. Agents reject submissions on the grounds that your sci-fi/horror/comedy/etc isn’t close enough to the last sci-fi/horror/comedy/etc success they were involved with. What’s the ‘typical’ word count for the genre you write? Go ahead and look it up – I’ll wait…
And you wrote under or over it didn’t you? You worry that you now have to chop it up or tack on something else. I’m betting you looked around a few sites till you found one that fit closer to your word count. Who the f*ck decided this? Who got to decide how short or long your book should be?
And more importantly.
Why are we listening to them?!
I have a proposition – writers of the world unite and throw away all the rules (not grammar rules, that would be wrong, and very silly). Ignore what the publishers, agents, talking heads and ‘experts’ (I feel like Doctor Evil with so many ‘air quotes’) tell you!
Write from your heart. Write whatever you want. Write any and every genre and confuse the fuck out of your current agent, if you have one.
Be free! Don’t let anyone tell you how many words you should write. Or where you should promote yourself. Or how many times a day you should post on social media.
To misquote some bloke who drank a lot – Rage, rage against the pressures of the publishing industry!
Flailing Through Life 
I guess genres are like poetic forms. I think it is easier to write a good sonnet than good free verse. But it is even better when you transcend the sonnet form. For example, Marlowe and Shakespeare write mostly in iambic pentameters (da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum). But perhaps the most famous example is ‘To be or not to be: that is the question” which is a perfect example of an iambic pentameter ,,, if it wasn’t for that extra syllable at the end.
So, when you’re starting out, use a genre to help you learn your craft. But when it comes to your masterpiece, transcend the genre rules. Or just write literature.
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Thanks for your feedback, Dave. It isn’t the writing I have an issue with, it’s the expectation that writers (and artists), have to do so much self promotion.
Personally, I think poetry is harder to write than a novel. The succinctness required to convey a feeling is mostly achieved by those who have been working in that format for many years.
I’m simply nota fan of social media. But it’s a necessary evil! 😉
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I agree with you about marketing. I hate it and I’m useless at it. But as I said, I think genre can be a useful structuring device for some authors. But your oeuvre is triumphantly cross-genre and that’s how I want to work too.
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Cheers for writing Dave. Let;s hope luck shines on us to avert all that marketing malarky!
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Love this.
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Cheers C.R!
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