Midway through Judi Hendricks’ latest novel, The Laws of Harmony, the heroine, Sunny Cooper, listens politely as her new co-worker and friend, Freddie Russell, describes the romance novel she’s been writing. Freddie is quick to explain that books about nature and biology– the subjects of her college studies– don’t sell too well.
“I’ve heard it’s hard to get published,” Sunny says.
“I know,” Freddie concurs, “but somebody’s got to make it. Might as well be me.”
Anyone who has ever written a novel with publication in mind knows that Sunny speaks the truth, while Freddie, for her part, displays a matter-of-fact toughness that should help ward off the rejection-letter blues. The conversation has a ring of authenticity to it, a correctness of detail typical of the hundreds of small exchanges that collectively give The Laws of Harmony and its characters a compelling quality. Yet Sunny’s observation about the publishing world hardly qualifies as a newsflash. Obviously Freddie gets that– she’s already gone as far as to choose a book genre based on potential sales.
I’d like to believe you can program a book for success and, because I found Freddie to be an appealing character, as I read this scene I also found myself wishing right along with her that it were true. Why shouldn’t Freddie be able to position herself to be the next shining light in the literary constellation? Aside from some nature books, her home reading selection is made up of “mostly bestsellers and romance novels”, Sunny tells us after secretly perusing the living-room bookshelf, So Freddie knows the medium, which is an important first step. So then, can’t a talented, determined writer just pick a genre and get going?
Yes, I suppose. And … no.
Yes, because others have done it. Before he became a mystery and police procedural writer, Michael Connelly took a job as a crime-beat reporter for a Miami newspaper, soaking in every on-the-job detail he could for use in future novels. Janet Evanovich first tried her hand unsuccessfully at literary writing before turning, like Freddie, to romance novels. Before he became the dean of all modern crime-fiction writers, Elmore Leonard churned out numerous paperback Westerns, a few of them brilliant– Hombre and Valdez is Coming are classics– because … well, that’s what was selling in the late fifties.
Yet, beneath the surface with these three writers something more than cold-eyed calculation was also at work. Call it a high level of dedication. Persistence. Devotion. A passion that can’t be faked. Yes, Connelly pursued a job to dovetail neatly with his writing aspirations, but think of the commitment this must have taken– waking in the middle of the night to the blast of a telephone; the bleary-eyed drives down empty highways; the bad coffee; having to wade through endless cop jargon and official doublespeak (nobody ever simply steps out of a car, they have to “exit the vehicle”) to get the story. Evanovich spent a decade attempting to write serious novels, toiling over three consecutive manuscripts that never saw the light of day, before discovering, through perseverence, what she did best; slowly she gravitated toward romance and stuck with it because she believed she had a few things to say about women who suffer through bad relationships and keep trying anyway. As for Leonard, those one-horse towns and open prairies may seem to have merely served as an early practice field for the far more popular stories he would later set in the dive bars and prisons and decaying mean streets of urban America, but every Western he ever wrote carried with it the tight, slyly moralistic, dialogue-driven style that sets him apart.
So yes, an author can consciously chose a genre and find success as a result– but not without a distinct passion for telling that type of story.
No, I’d say, one cannot just choose a genre in eenie-meenie-miney-moe fashion and reasonably expect to make real headway. For one thing, the field of writing is full of specialized authors who do what they do very well, so unless you’re ridiculously talented it’s unlikely you’ll distinguish yourself– let alone be published– by going through the motions. And writing a book is such a long, arduous endeavor, why would any sane person commit to such a laborious journey armed with anything less than an unshakable conviction that theirs is a story that simply must be told?
Getting back to Freddie Russell, had she invited me over that night and asked me what I thought of her on-again, off-again work on a romance novel, I’d have told her that was just fine, as long as she was being true to herself. If I’d had some wine and got to talking a bit, I’d probably also have said: never mind the genre, Fred, and while you’re at it, forget the industry’s future sales projections and latest identifiable trends– the publishing world is loaded with smart, sensitive people who haven’t a clue about how business really works. I’d have told her to firmly, consistently tune out any know-it-all friends and relatives who think they know better. And finally, before she kicked me out for talking too much, I’d have said: live inside the story you want to tell, cherish the characters you bring to life. Love the process. This way, whatever success comes along will truly be yours.
POSTSCRIPT:
Here’s an odd pair of surprises worth reporting: I wrote the above remarks without having noticed a brief Q-and-A interview with the author that’s tucked into the back pages of The Laws of Harmony, but lo and behold, there it was yesterday morning as the commuter train delivering me to work in downtown L.A. lurched through a rough patch of tracks and Judi’s book fell out of my briefcase. Surprise Number 2 came when, upon reading the Q-and-A, I noted that Judi was asked to what extent she actively resisted writing “works that can be categorized by genre or theme”, as The Laws of Harmony seemed to combine “mystery, romance, self-discovery, and all things culinary.” Judi answered by explaining that these elements are included in the book because she finds real life to be a “fascinating pastiche” of just such elements. In other words, the novel is a direct reflection of the world as Judith Ryan Hendricks alone sees it.
I’ll take that as the author’s endorsement of my advice to Freddie.
A final note: setting the literary labeling and genre-talk aside for a moment, there is one simple term of art that neatly describes a novel like The Laws of Harmony, the kind of story that springs not from a deft marketing strategy but instead is born purely from the inside out. Such a book is referred to as “an original work of fiction.”
-John DeCure
John DeCure is a third-generation Californian and lifelong surfer whose three novels are set in and around the greater Los Angeles and beach communities in which he grew up. He graduated from California State University at Fullerton in 1981 with a degree in English before entering law school in 1987. His novels, Reef Dance and Bluebird Rising, were published by St. Marti
n’s Press; both books feature attorney and surfer J. Shepard as their protagonist. In the Spring of 2009 he completed the manuscript of a third, stand-alone novel, Tell You What I’m Gonna Do, which is set in the hard-knock world of outside sales. DeCure lives in Long Beach, California with his wife and three young sons. His fiction and non-fiction pieces have appeared in Surfer magazine and The Surfer’s Journal for many years. A long-time prosecutor, he is a senior deputy attorney general with the Office of the Attorney General in Los Angeles.
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