Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Something smells in here

I'm spoiled. I've been spoiled for several years. And it isn't really a good thing.

I sell almost every short story I write, quite often to the first or second editor to whom I submit them.

When I'm feeling good, I tell myself, "I really know my markets." When I'm not feeling good, I tell myself, "I'm not stretching myself."

When I started writing again in late December--after 3.5 months of negligible effort caused, it appears, by medication I began taking following a quadruple bypass in September and ceased taking a few days before Christmas--I wrote several stories outside my usual comfort zone, including an erotic vampire story and a P.I./fantasy cross-genre story.

As the weeks pass, I find myself more and more concentrating my efforts on the same-old same-old. Oh, sure, I've been targeting Woman's World since the beginning of the year, but I'm targeting a new market, not a new genre.

Before something starts to smell around here, perhaps I need to push myself a little harder. I need to stretch my writing muscles. I need to write fiction outside my comfort zone and not settle for selling the short stories I already know I can write.

Maybe I'll even create new genres:

Instead of writing Chick Lit, I'll write Hick Lit.

I'll combine mystery subgenres and write Hardboiled Cozies or Cozy Noir.

Or maybe I'll just try to finish another novel.

4 comments:

Graham Powell said...

I kinda thought your Boyette stories WERE hick lit. Maybe a classic country house murder... in a trailer park?

Chris O'Grady said...

My sympathies with your dilemma(s?)My own problem I never considered a problem: when I wrote, I just wrote. When I no longer felt the desire to write, I didn't. I never considered that I might have writer's block. It just wasn't there, so why worry about it? Luckily, I didn't have any trouble writing my just-published hard-boiled private eye yarn THE FOREVER GIRL - ISBN # 1606939939
which is a revenge novel set in Las Vegas dealing with a victim of a beating going up against the mob's thugs posing as Security at the new hotel/casino, Florian's. Jim Brandon does have a rough time just surviving.

Michael Bracken said...

Sure, Graham, at the end of the story our detective can gather all the suspects in the living room of the double-wide and explain exactly who the killer is and exactly why he killed his Aunt Sissy, who, before the operation, was actually his Uncle Daddy, and how the killer came to be his own grandfather. By the time we finish explaining the family tree, everyone will have forgotten about the murder.

Anonymous said...

Everyone may have forgotten about the murder...except Hank, who ain't nothing but a hound dog. Every GOOD classic country trailer park murder needs a classic country dog.