27th November 2016 | for Creatives | artist integrity, novel writing, writing, genre, Donald Maass, creative freedom, break the rules |
"Out-of-category authors have begun a journey that I wish all novelists would take: a journey away from what is comfortable and convention-bound to fiction that is free, courageous, inventive, and influential because it's utterly unique. It's a place where novelists don't obey genre rules, but summon them when they're useful and bend them to their own purposes."
"Perhaps in part because they have fewer rules to follow, they must rely more on universal techniques and stay truer to their inner compasses. Without genre crutches to lean on they must walk the walk of true novelists. You can call them genre-bending if you like, but I call them genre-transcending. While they may establish a new category, they are genuine fiction masters."
"Today, thanks to certain pioneering authors, some great books, and some great movies and TV series, the wall between genre and mainstream fiction has become not a wall, but a river. It can be forded or bridged."
"I never thought of myself as a horror writer. That's what other people think. And I never said jack shit about it. [My wife] came from nothing, I came from nothing, we were terrified that they would take this thing away from us. So if the people wanted to say 'You're this,' as long as the books sold, that was fine. I thought, I am going to zip my lip and write what I wanted to write."
"When other novelists unsettle us, we praise them. Yet when our own writing unsettles us, we worry."
"For virtually all novelists, the challenge is to push farther, go deeper, and get mean and nasty."
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