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This
article is especially for those who belong to the world of art, writing in
specific. At least you should have an idea of how books are created and what
magnitude of labour goes into the production of them.
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are unable to connect with it, please clickhere.
Beauty is inexplicable and it
serves better if one leaves it to be so. But often we encounter trends that
might suggest a different truth. From movies to fashion, from literature to
social activism, there exist patterns to which each individual belonging to
these activities tries to cling to. Or else, doom might befall them. It is
truth.
This can be illustrated with
some simple examples. If one needs to look beautiful, and wears mud on one’s
face, that would not guarantee admiration, but quite the opposite. This is true
with movies or writing too.
In politics too one finds no
different story.
In politics, we have all been
granted unusual amounts of rants and promises over the years and still find
ourselves betrayed at the end of five years or ten years each…or whatever it
takes to end one government and start the other. At the start of another
government, we all look for more to expect and at the end find it
disappointing. Anything out of this way is deemed not normal or clearly looked
at with some suspicion. Yes, that is true; it is suspicion that is born out of
any attempt to be generous or to do things out of the way.
Saddam Husain, when he was
alive, seemed to have a good reputation with his natives. People have been
talking about the generosity of the dictator. But the West looked at it with
suspicion. Of course, there was no other way either. How would you feel if a
political leader comes to your home and gives you one billion rupees, just for
nothing in return?
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How could one understand
anything that one doesn’t know about previously, let alone enjoying? For
example, the news of a UFO sighting might thrill us; an alien contact might
shrill us; and a close encounter might kill us. What we see here, is a close
reading of how one reacts to the unknown. There is zero amount of aesthetic
entertainment in the real event of a close encounter. A book is not like that,
it should have an aesthetic dimension too.
Often, some writers shun this
step, to give a name to what they do. This is mostly due to two reasons; the
first one—it’s not an easy job for any writer to understand the magnitude of
what he or she does. To label means to be judgmental. How can a parent be
judgmental towards their children? This is the same with artists and writers
too. A painting, a book, a piece of music, all plays that role of children in
their lives and they are bound by the laws of love.
The second reason why some
writers avoid labels is the fear of carrying over the genre titles upon
themselves. Once tagged with a label, always known by that label. As an
instance these days, writers of what was once celebrated as “Horror” fiction
try to assert themselves as writers of “Thrillers” or better with no labels at
all. The Horror Writers Association’s website shows the reason: “Instead of
"evolving, ever-changing," horror became defined—typecast if you
will—forced to conform to a certain method and a certain manner. Publishers
flooded the market with books that matched this formula, giving readers more
and more of what they demanded.” And “Horror's originality, its vital essence,
had been stolen right before our eyes.”
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Such writers as Dean Koontz
take a cautious stand as well. The website goes on saying, “Dean Koontz's books
are filled with the strange and fantastic, yet he vehemently argues against
being labeled a horror writer, despite being the first president of this very
organization….As the horror boom of the eighties turned into the drought of the
nineties, horror went underground.”
For a beginner, there is
always some crush for what the masters do. When this happens and starts taking
hold of the beginner’s writing life, a void between practicability and idealism
starts developing. This results into clashes within oneself, not in the
productivity of literary works. The majority of time and efforts are burned up
by this confusion: whether to stay uninfluenced by genres or to establish
oneself in any one category within the specific form of art. In such
circumstances, some writers tend to lose whatever little audience they have by
trying “differences” or divergent writing. Breaking laws sounds extremely
appealing when there is no status at all being part of a society that breeds
those laws. It’s a beginner’s syndrome. Sometimes, the writer’s creative train
even slips off the track. To stay in the game, one has to follow the rules of
the game too.
The priority of a writer is
not to write a “different” kind of book. One’s sincere and genuine attempt to
create artistic expressions makes the book different and great. This means,
there is no need to deny the possibilities of writing literatures ‘genre-specific’.
This helps in narrowing down the perspective horizons of the reader and helps
the writer gain a crucial grounding in the mind of the reader. Those books that
appear with the label ‘fiction’ on their back cover sure give the readers the
apprehension that they will satiate his or her thirst for a novel. While buying
books, this is a significant help anyone can get.
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So if “YA” appears on the
label no reader would attempt to expect a horror story involving two old
people. This gives a preface to the book. Books speak through its label even
before a page is turned.
I mentioned it
elsewhere as well. “Labels have a paradoxical binary role to play. Within a
label a writer may find himself adapted and indulge in a more focused
production. However, sometimes, this very focus backfires and provides no
options for the writer to work on something apart from the routine, even if he
or she wants to go beyond what is their usual way of writing. This is much like
the misery of the character Paul Sheldon from the novel Misery, by Stephen
King. Obviously, it is market that creates such labels and governs the very
system of professional writing.” (Book Review: Caught-a novel by Harlan Coben)
A writer’s
pursuit is to understand and at the same time to be understood. If a label like
a mystery or a thriller or a YA can add to the understanding of what you do, in
the world, then why don’t?
Courtesy: Horror Writers Association
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