No, I'm just kidding. I've been fussing about what to blog about next since the first post. It's a damn good thing I don't keep a personal blog. I'd be writing about deciding between cereal and toast in the morning. (Toast, blueberry jelly, give a piece to the bearded dragon).
Then I had to pick categories for the post; by Kathleen Warnock is easy, the others not so much. But it feeds right into what I've been mulling about for the last several days: genre.
Last Friday, I went to a reading at Oscar Wilde Bookshop; the fabulous Emma Donaghue was reading from her new book "The Sealed Letter." I am a fan of Emma in at least three different ways: her books (from Lifemask to Landings, as well as the short story collection The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits); she was the editor of Best Lesbian Erotica a couple years ago, and picked one of my stories; and I saw a play of hers, "I Know My Own Heart," a couple years ago at the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, and loved it. It's an epistolary play based on the life of Anne Lister, called by some "the first modern lesbian." I sent her an email after BLE08 was published. I had submitted the short story under my erotica name; so I identified myself, as myself and a playwright. I thanked her for selecting my piece, and also asked if TOSOS II might do a reading of some of her work in our Robert Chesley/Jane Chambers Playwrights Project. She sent me a copy of the play, and we had a great reading of it earlier this year.
Emma Donoghue is a writer after my own heart: she writes about what interests her, and follows her creative impulses in whatever form they take. The new novel is a historical fiction, based on a true story of a scandalous London divorce in the Victorian era. This follows her previous novel, which is a modern love story set in Ireland and Canada, with an Indian/Irish protagonist. (Donoghue is Irish-born, and emigrated as an adult to Canada, where she lives with her partner and their children). She spoke about her upcoming books, and said that her next novel will take place from the point of view of a five-year-old.
I wish she'd write more plays, and I'll bet she would if more people would produce them. Donoghue has had success (and contracts from publishers) for her fiction for a number of years, so I guess that's where we'll see the most of her.
I think it's somewhat more possible to make a living in fiction (though still extremely hard) than in playwriting, and a lot more outlets for publication (though few that pay very much). I sit here at my desk with a drawerful of submissions for Best Lesbian Erotica 2010 next to me, and 20 or 30 of those pieces will end up in published form about this time next year. In addition to my own plays I've got in various stages of completion, I also have two longer pieces of fiction I attack when I get a chance. They (and most of my plays) are on various topics that interest me: class, fame, education, rock and roll, basketball, the choices we make and how much power we have over them, and girls kissing (among other activities). So for me, it's not genre, it's the story, the characters and the action. The medium is sort of the message, but not really.
A few years ago, I moderated a panel at the Saints & Sinners conference in New Orleans, and the topic was "writing across genres" (there was another panel earlier in the day, "writing across genders.") And the first question I addressed to the panelists was: so, how's it feel to be put in ANOTHER box? Along with being GLBT writers, they were then subdivided into sci-fi, mystery, erotica, categories etc. And (not surprisingly) they all answered that they considered themselves WRITERS, with everything else coming after.
That's a worldview I encourage, and do my bit to blur the arbitrary lines between forms. As a playwright, I often find myself pointing out that drama is indeed a literary art to the printed-word folks. And, that spoken word is a form of entertainment, a kind of theater.
I do my bit for this kind of anarchy at Drunken! Careening! Writers!, my reading series at KGB Bar (the third Thursday of every month), where I put on writers whose work interests me. I'm currently putting together my '09 lineup, and am proud to say that I have a happy mashup of poets, playwrights, novelists, comics, and memoirists, among others.
Because if it's good, you'll know it. And enjoy it. I think, when you're moved by something, you look around and say: "See where I am now!" Rather than "what manner of conveyance got me here?" Printed page, word on stage, billboard, blog...the point is being somewhere different than where you started.
