Does the Lit/Comm "Divide" Affect Author Creativity?

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Over at Publisher’s Weekly, Jordan Foster has a fascinating piece that ostensibly starts out rehashing that tired discussion about the barrier between literary and mystery fiction, but then quickly evolves into something much more interesting:

How does the stubborn notion that crime fiction is and will always be “somehow lacking” affect the writer’s creative process? Does the issue of (lofty) literary versus (crass) commercial ‘actually come into play when an author is staring at a blank computer screen, about to start a new novel? Or is categorization, as Dennis Lehane claims, “a marketing issue, not a writing issue”?’

Foster cites John Banville, the Booker Prize–winning author who also writes crime fiction under the pseudonym Benjamin Black. When writing under his own name, Banville manages to produce only “100 hard-fought words” every day; “writing as Black, he manages several thousand.”

Now that’s food for thought.

In such a case, categorization is a writing issue. But then, of course, that’s Banville’s case. Kate Atkinson has a British detective series and has also won the Whitbread award for fiction. She doesn’t think of such categories when writing. “When I sit down to write, I simply feel as if I’m writing a book,” she’s quoted as saying.

Do I think in terms of the literary versus the commercial when writing? No. But I do worry about pleasing others. When writing, any thoughts about whether my agent will be happy or able to find an editor who’ll want to buy it dampen my sense of creative freedom. Soon the writing becomes more about pleasing perceived or anticipated expectations than about telling the story. It becomes a constant battle between the creative urges in the left brain and the censorious urges in the right one. That’s actually one of the reasons I became interested in self-publishing. Once free of concern about pleasing others, I found I could write more freely. (I still find writing difficult, however. I’m never happy with what I’ve done. I’m not as perfectionist, shall we say, as the author Justine Larbalestier described, who always, as a matter of course, discards her entire first draft.)

It’s a shame that the mere thought about categorization, (i.e., literary prejudice) could squeeze or even throttle creativity. It’s horrid that an author can be made so concerned about the expectations of others, whether formulated in terms of categories or otherwise, that, as with Banville, he can go from thousands of words-a-day to a hard-won 100.

What’s the solution? Foster opens his article by quoting bestselling author Michael Connelly: “Categories are like walls, and walls keep people out.” I’d like to conclude with another comment by Connelly, one I heard him say at Bouchercon last month in Indianapolis. When asked how to deal with distractions from writing, Connelly uttered one sentence: “Keep your head down.”

Asked to clarify, he said he meant to literally keep your head down, eyes focused on the word at hand. Put all that other stuff aside. He even has (or had) the saying taped above his computer keyboard. He would work in a darkened area, anything that would provide a blank (or non-distracting) canvas. Anything that would help him get into the world he was trying to create.

Mmmm. Maybe, I’ll do that, too. Look what it’s done for him!

Listening to Lizz Wright, The Orchard.