The things we write about
Something I struggled with as a young writer who hadn't yet found my voice was feeling like I had to have something to say. As a teenager I was deeply into fantasy and horror and wanted to write stories filled with cool shit and fun things happening. For some reason, though, I got it into my head that it wasn't enough to just have cool stuff happen. I had to have something to say, some deeper purpose to my writing.
This was paralysing.
As I've got older - I'm nearly 40 now - I've realised that this isn't really something I need to concern myself with. It is, in fact, enough to just write about some cool things that are entertaining to read. Plenty of people have made very successful careers doing this. In a lot of ways my own career is based on this. I may not write fiction for a living but 90% of my RPG writing boils down to "here are some weird little guys, and here are some cool situations".
In recent years I've read less and less genre fiction and more literary fiction. (Yes, litfic is a genre with conventions just like any other, but you know what I mean when I make that distinction). And as I've begun making a slow move back towards writing fiction again, I find myself wanting to write litfic. And it's sort of funny, in a way, because I'm suddenly faced with that old fear again, except this time it feels much more valid. In literary fiction specifically it isn't really going to work if you just put some cool or fun or horrific shit on the page. I may not need to have something to say, but my characters probably should have something to say.
It's likely that because I haven't written literary fiction before I'm simply at the beginning of the process. I've spent a long time developing my taste, but I haven't yet invested in my skills enough that the gap between skill and taste feels surmountable. In a lot of ways it's like starting again as a writer. Many of the skills I've developed, which are largely interchangeable between fantasy or horror or SF or crime or even romance, don't feel like they apply quite as much. Wanting to write literary fiction is highlighting the gaps and weaknesses in my toolkit - not because litfic is in any way "superior" to other genres but because it calls for a slightly different approach that I haven't spent time honing.
At this point in time I'm actually not sure what the approach is. I'm struggling to figure out how I go about conceiving of a premise for a litfic story. It's a genre that sounds a lot of time swimming in mundanity, and I'm so used to beginning with a Big Idea that everything I come up with feels... Well. Mundane.
It's an interesting problem to have. And it's fairly humbling, too. I've been writing for well over 30 years, I've been doing it professionally for 8 years (though not in fiction), and I've managed to make myself feel like a beginner again.
I hate it. But I also sort of love it.