Fitting In

When you finish a book, and are thinking about how and where you’re going to publish it, you will likely be asked to decide where on the bookshelf it belongs. Is it suspense, romantic suspense? High fantasy, swords and sorcery? Memoir, or narrative nonfiction? What are the comp titles? How is it like other books that have sold well but also different from all of them? Where, dear author, does your book fit?

For some people this is not a difficult question. They read historical fiction, and they write historical fiction. That’s what they love and that’s where they belong. I guess. I have my suspicions even about these folks, however; a suspicion based on my now sixty years of being a person and talking to other people and it’s this: no one feels like they fit in. Everyone believes themselves to be an outsider. It’s a strange reality, if you take a moment to think about it. If I feel like I’m on the outside looking in, then there simply must be those on the inside looking out. Mustn’t there? I don’t believe there are.

Instead, there are just a mass of individuals, all wanting to feel a part of something, wanting to feel loved and appreciated and heard, and also wanting at the exact same time to be recognized for what is completely unique about them. And then one of these individuals writes a book, a book they tried to make as clear an expression of what they think is funny and profound and entertaining as they could, tried not to imitate anyone but listen instead to their Muse, and then this individual has to decide where it “fits,” and they think, “Nowhere! It’s just like me and needs a bookstore all to itself!”

Hopefully that individual remembers that comp titles and genres and the like are just handy and, to some degree, necessary marketing tools and not actually calls for an existential reckoning. But I also hope they remember that they are like windows that allows light through. The light is everyone’s, it shines through everyone and for everyone, but only we can keep our windows clear, can choose to throw the curtain wide or pull it closed for fear what comes through will illuminate nothing but our isolation.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com