There’s a weird dynamic that happens when a genre fiction writer meets a literary fiction writer. A suspiciousness. Like we’re two dogs from different packs circling each other. Now this is crazy! We both fish out of the same water. We’re both trying to do the same thing which is to write words for an emotional\spiritual reaction. And in the end, I’m not sure how much we get to choose what we write. It’s the old thing with Stephen King and Robert Frost, looking at a New England pond. One will have monsters. The other inspiration on the beauty and truths of life. Both will string words together to capture the experience.

Okay, now, this is a complete generalization, that genre fiction writers and literary fiction writers are constantly battling like Montagues and Capulets. I had dinner with a fiction writer, Eleanor Brown who wrote The Weird Sisters. We didn’t duel with steak knives. Well, we were at a Mexican food place. We shattered Corona bottles and tried to slash each other with the broken ends. Kidding.

However, after Saturday night, at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers conference, after I blew it with a nice literary fiction writer, I had to figure out what happens when I meet someone writing literary fiction. Me. Only me. My reaction as a soon to be published genre writer. Let’s say I’m the Mercutio, caught between the Montagues or the Capulets. Or Friar Lawrence. No, Mercutio, he was so much more mercurial.

This is what happens when I meet a writer and I ask, “What do you write?” And they answer, “I write literary fiction.” My immediate reaction is, “Yeah, right.” Yeah, I know, I’m horrible, but this is the truth. If I can’t be honest with you, World, who can I be honest with? I’ll share all of my dirty secrets. Except maybe for two or three that only Chris Devlin knows. And she is a vault, baby.

So there I am, thinking, “Yeah, right, you can write literary fiction? Who do you think you are?” In essence, I think THEY are saying, “I can write better than you, genre fiction boy. Wanna go up against the champ?” And I don’t. I get afraid.

So after I scoff, I get afraid. Maybe they do write better than me! Oh my gosh, maybe I can’t write at all. Maybe I should give up and never, ever write again. I hear there are other things to do with one’s time. Collect stamps. Photography. Maybe join the Elk’s Club.

All the while, the literary fiction writer is inching toward the door because I’m losing it. Usually, I keep this all to myself. But not last Saturday night. Oh boy. Total and complete meltdown. And if you know me, once I start to blow it socially, I don’t stop digging until we’re all buried.

Now, there is some historical precedence to the whole literary versus genre fiction thing. I wrote a paper on Science Fiction as Literature in college, and one of the things that happened during the 1950’s is that science fiction became so incredibly popular that publishing houses opened up the doors to anything, and I mean anything. I heard a story recently that since the writers got paid by the word that they would sometimes overwrite scenes just to get more cash. Five pages of a guy brushing his teeth. True story. And so, a lot of junk hit the market. And maybe you could say the same thing about romance novels, fantasy novels, mysteries, et cetera. There have been booms and busts for genres. How many cut-rate horror novels were there in the late 70’s and early 80’s?
So, yeah, maybe there was been trash published in genre fiction.

And yes, there is still a stigma. I was talking with a college professor who was also a famous novelist. I shan’t name names. I told him I wanted to get published. He sniffed and said I should dash off a mystery. They’re so easy and they seem to sell.

But the truth is, writing is hard, whether you are writing mysteries, romances, or literary novels. It’s hard. My friend says that it’s like building a table with 23 legs. It’s all hard. We should be supporting one another.

But I will learn from my experience. No more scoffing. No more fear. The next time I meet a literary fiction writer, I’m going to hug them and cry into the crook of their neck. I’m going to weep and say, “My brother, my sister, my soul, my heart, my fellow writer. Let us journey together for we are both bound by blood, ink, and sweat.”

Yeah, then they won’t think I’m weird at all.

P.S. A friend of mine from a writer’s workshop long ago has asked me to critique her literary novel because she said, and I quote, “You know your sh*t.” I’m so excited. I love books. Whether they be literary, genre, dripping wet in the bath, or bone dry boring. I love books.

P.P.S. A last dirty little secret. A last confession. I want to do both. I want to do genre and literary in the same stories. And not just a little magical realism. No, full on, in your face, genre stuff but with a beautiful, literary bent. Think Margaret Atwood. Think David Lynch meets Stephen King meets frakking Shakespeare. Hey, that’s my first novel. Anyway. Oh, to dream. All writers are dreamers because to write is to dream, and perhaps Mercutio put it best. Maybe he is talking about all writing in the passage below because all fiction, all stories, are dreams.

True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air
And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence,
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south.