What writer wants to pigeon-hole his or her own work? It sounds a lot more interesting if you say that your work has a bit of everything. But publishers and bookstores will probably disagree--they need to classify fiction. That's how they think they will be able to sell books.
If I ever get published, I will leave the classification to the publishers and the editors and the agents and the stores. After all, they have nothing else to do. What we writers should be worried about is what to put in our stories and how to tell it so it sounds fresh. There are only a few story lines in existence--if you come up with a basic plot, it's pretty much assured that someone, somewhere, has thought of it before. It's a variation on the saying that most of us will never have any original ideas. But I think what matters is in what order those thoughts are. There are only ten digits in the decimal system, but particular numbers, for instance pi, go on infinitely non-repeating. So like pi, find a unique order for those ideas.
It's easier to say what my idea is not. I'm not going to try to be literary. "Literature", actually, really isn't a genre but more like a tone and an outlook. No matter how much the reader may identify with this particular writing, there is a certain level of pretention that the author is trying to say something. Me? I'm not trying to say anything at all. If any sort of message comes out, it will only be secondary to the events.
But what would I say my idea is? In 2001, I called my idea a trashy occult mystery. In 2002, I basically wrote in that particular genre again. This year, well, at this point I'm just going with "speculative" which is a term from the pulp magazine industry. Speculative encapsulates anything that might be, could be, will never be. This includes everything from mystery, horror, fantasy, and science-fiction. So in that sense, I'm going to write in the same genre.
I wonder how many people will be speculative for November.
