3rd November 2016 | for Creatives | create for YOURSELF, artist integrity, novel writing, horror, writing, Stephen King, genre, creative freedom |
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The biggest for me [by self-publishing] is the freedom to write what I want when I want. I can jump genres and write several novels a year. Traditional publishing is much too restrictive. I don't want to pump out the same book over and over. I want to challenge myself and produce the work that I feel is missing from the marketplace."
"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."
"All I can do is write a better book and one that I'm proud of. I can't meet everyone's expectations, but I can strive to meet my own."
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