Thomas Sullivan

I think choosing a career or a genre is a little like making love. Well…a lot like making love. You have a certain skill set, and we can call that your power of attraction — your good looks. Good looks (as women always know) grant the power of choice, and so you use your skill set to attract a specific readership. It is a superficial beginning, but you build on it, so that over time you engender a certain loyalty (faithfulness). And in the happily-ever-after — if you’ve chosen the right readership — it morphs into a true butterfly. Like beauty, the initial attraction itself stays in the eyes of the beholder, because it is locked in memory and association. But the sustaining thing is not just that specific beauty or attractiveness, it is the fact that you used it to make the choice you did. You belong to those readers.

That seems to be an increasingly trendy part of our culture: the social pressure to belong to something apart from the substance or lack of it in a relationship. You see it in, for instance, music. Bands like Modest Mouse or The Shins become initially popular among a group of independent fans (“Indies”), but when they cross over into mainstream success they are almost reviled by their original followers for having “left.” So, for better or worse, genre may act more like a benevolent hostage-taker than a fair exchange of loyalty for value at one point in a writer’s life. Or to keep within the metaphor of this column, a jealous lover.

And there’s the rub. Because if you haven’t chosen the right readership — one that fits the full range of who you are — you may be stuck. This is probably the most secret (shhh!) complaint I hear from other writers. They feel like they are suffocating in a confining genre. Often they want to develop more character-driven narratives that would be considered indulgent in the action/tone of category fiction. Sometimes they balk at popular themes and new trends. Sometimes the desire to change simply reflects their own growth and outreach into the real world as they get older. In this sense, either they have outgrown their marriages — their readers — or else the genres have changed or revealed limitations in a way that leaves them stagnating.

It is no one’s fault, and there is no right or wrong. Just the unassailable fact of change or awakening. But now there are complications of time invested, marketability, image and loyalty. Assets may be involved. And yet, the choice for a writer who feels they can no longer grow in a category of fiction is often to die in the traces or to risk rejection all over again in a new direction. In order to keep my focus here, I’m just going to shorthand the philosophical side of it. To my mind, there is no real choice. Not being true to yourself is being untrue to everything else. It disrespects the marriage. The consequences of that may take a long time to become apparent, but eventually who you pretend to be and what you do will ring false and hollow all the way around. If you’re going to try and fool the world full-time, why bother to write at all?

So, if the goal is to be who you are soul deep, then life is too precious and short to procrastinate. In that situation, you put your quality time and passion where it maxes out your potential. Of course, you still want the chrome-plated, bling-encrusted, plastic banana testimonials you may have garnered along the old way, and it’s nice if they come, but if they don’t, you have to be wise enough and real enough to walk the walk wherein the true reward is in the doing…the living. Or in the words of teen rock idol Ricky Nelson in another millennium (after he tried to break out at a Madison Square Garden concert):

“When I got to the Garden party, they all knew my name
But no one recognized me, I didn’t look the same…

If you gotta play at garden parties, I wish you a lotta luck
But if memories were all I sang, I’d rather drive a truck.”

As I said, the number of writers I know who secretly yearn for air beyond what they breathe in their seemingly successful careers is quite arresting. It is almost a cliché (especially for writers who succeed early), like lamenting, “… it’s too bad that youth has to be wasted on the young.” Blessed are those who find a good fit early and never need to change, say I. Loyal cadres of fans should never be disdained. But for those writers who try to segue out of genre, the result is often disappointment from their fans and the perception that they have “lost it.” And the fans are correct, as far as it goes. The writers have lost the genre. I don’t think there is any mending that; any need to, really. It’s apples and oranges. The problem comes when the writer tries to have it both ways by writing hybrids. They usually end up with an “orpple.” The fans aren’t fooled, the writer isn’t satisfied.

Trying to make the genre fit the writer never works. The genre is what it is — what it’s supposed to be. So, if the writer doesn’t want a clean break, then they need a partition within their work. Sometimes that can be done openly, but more often (much, much more often than you might think), it is done with a separate identity. That’s what pseudonyms are for. It really doesn’t matter whether the world knows or not. What matters is whether the writer can handle the dual identity. Does “to thine own self be true” mean 24/7? Or does it mean that you can be true enough to yourself to be fulfilled but still maintain a presence in what you did before? I’ve seen it work out either way, though more often the writer makes an undiluted commitment in their new direction. Those existing assets I mentioned before will still be there, like children. And in the long run, they will reflect a part of the total and true writer, rather than something they tried to micromanage forever. Living your own history is a good way to miss the present and render the future stillborn. But then, if you had a really, really, really good yesterday, maybe living in its memory is the way to go. Sort of like being permanently on drugs, though. Can you make love to the past? That just seems like a colossal waste to me, because it is a fear — fear of losing, fear of never being loved again — that locks writers (and people) into unfulfilling careers. We all have to choose whether courage trumps fear and honesty trumps appearances in our lives. Either you choose life’s grand adventure, risks inclusive, or you bury the active, growing part of yourself now. As Jack London put it:

“I would rather be ashes than dust!

I would rather that my spark should burn out

In a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom

Of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

The function of man is to live, not to exist…”

Yeah. Use it or lose it. Using it fulfills your purpose and makes life worth living. Anything less is an affront to whatever created you. If you bury your assets in the earth, you are burying yourself — as the parable of the talents teaches. And whether it is God or Shakespeare that gets the last word: “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man…”

Photos in my free monthly newsletter for April include updates on the white feather in last month’s column that many of you have asked about. You can follow me on Twitter now (http://twitter.com/thomassullivan ). I’ll also be happy to put you on my mailing list if you email me at: mn333mn@earthlink.net . Past newsletters are archived at the website below, photos included.  Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.  If you’d like to see a sample of my fiction, the opening chapter from THE WATER WOLF is on my website. 

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com/