How did you decide to write literary fiction?

I never decided. It's just a label that happens to fit what I write.

Unfortunately for me, I don't tend to love reading most literary journals, since most of what I like to read and write tends to have speculative or fantastical elements.

Plenty of novels I enjoy though.

It wasn't a conscious decision. It just happened. My first story (published in the Birmingham Arts Journal) was a character study about a man who loved trains. Then came other stories: a woman who was on the brink of despair. Another who needed desperately to get out from under her husband's thumb.

stormie said:

Another who needed desperately to get out from under her husband's thumb.

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Literally or figuratively? Or both?

gettingby said:

I think what you read does play a big role in what you write.

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Totally agree with this. And this is why literary fiction is very tough for me to write. haha. My main genre is mainstream. My preference for books are ones with plot, and that's my strength in writing. I'm very weak when it comes to characterizations and emotions, so you can imagine how much harder it is for me to write this literary book.

But like many others mentioned, it just happened. I'm in the middle of my only literary mss right now and it's slow going. Not only am I not used to writing literary, the story was also inspired by a death in the family and it was a bit of an outlet at the time. At times I've had to take time off from it because it would be too painful to write certain scenes.

I write what I like to read, and people and situations I like to read about. My first love is nonfiction, and contemporary is the most nonfictiony of fiction. As for the literary part, I am impressed when the ordinary is made extraordinary, and I hope to write something like that. Someday.

I love literary fiction, both reading and writing it. I always wrote shorts that were literary, tried for a long time to be more practical and wrote a few romance manuscripts, but they just weren't my thing. I figure I might as well be unpublished writing what I love.

I think it chose me. In 5th grade my cousin and I were writing little stories at the table. Hers had explosions and car crashes. Mine was about...well, I don't remember what. I was just trying to describe how something felt. And my mother, who came to love my stories, said it "had to be about something that happened." So there was the proclivity.

And now I read almost exclusively lit, with a very occasional foray into mystery or, with Station Eleven or the Dog Stars, dystopia.

Recently I've been depressed about it. I'd write otherwise but...hmmm, I don't think my heart would be in it. Someday, maybe I'll hit upon the Story that goes with the writing.

This thread came at the perfect time!

I had always written literary fiction, but had a hard time with it in the past. Plus I didn't know I was actually writing it. So when a story couldn't conform to the rules that I so earnestly tried to lay on them, they ended up unfinished. But now I've discovered why my stories sound a certain way, and why I'm having a hard time sticking to a hard and fast genre of any kind.

And duh! All of my favorite books are literary fiction. It's hard to me to read genre. Duh! Why was I trying to write it all this time?

Now I'm breathing a sigh of relief. It's also helping me think differently about my business model as an author.

Until a few squirrels told me such, I honestly had no idea I was writing "lit fic." It always seemed so, let's say, pedantic. Ethereal. Out of reach. Presumptuous. Pretentious and over my head.

I suppose it picked me without knowing it.

I was told by writing group members my writing was "literary fiction." Maybe that's because I'm overly descriptive and pay more attention to craft than plot
I didn't used to care so much about genre. In fact I kinda hate it as a divisive marketing concept - but I see its uses.

I agree that what you read informs what you write. I've always been a really international reader, an American that reads a lot of stuff in translation. It hasn't been until recently that my reading has been predominately American authors, and that's been a real revelation! It's startling, the breadth of writing so close.

Literary is relative. I'm not sure if I'd classify my current writing as literary, but others seem to have done so. I do enjoy reading writers who are clearly literary, though, and that's what inspired me (especially when writing short fiction).

I like high hurdles and despise being told what to do. Literary Fiction is the only place that will have me then.

I'm memorizing all your names, fellow lit-fic writers. Sometimes AW, though full of great info, feels a little lonely in that respect. And if any of you would like to exchange crits, I'm up for it.

BartlebySays said:

I like high hurdles and despise being told what to do. Literary Fiction is the only place that will have me then.

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Good genre fiction also sets its hurdles high.

It's the only thing I'm capable of, at least in terms of long fiction. I've done some shorts in offbeat fantasy/horror stuff, but, frankly, i'm not a good enough writer to tackle a standard genre, even in those I read a lot of (mystery, SF). And never will be.

caw

I was hoping to impress the hot TA in my writing class.

But seriously, my stories choose the genre, I just write them. I don't start out picking what genre the story will fit in.

lacygnette said:

I'm memorizing all your names, fellow lit-fic writers. Sometimes AW, though full of great info, feels a little lonely in that respect. And if any of you would like to exchange crits, I'm up for it.

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Gosh, I would LOVE if you could crit my stuff, but I would feel really bad that you'd be getting the short end of the stick by me critiquing your stuff. I'm pretty bad with literary. (See above)

I started, way back in the third grade maybe, writing genre. I loved, and still love, horror and things with fantastical elements. Magical realism and slipstream and post-modern writings excite me. As I got older, though, I found my writing stopped incorporating those elements. It wasn't a decision, just something that happened. I started to care more about internal conflicts and characterization. That doesn't mean I am any good at it, mind you, but I feel I'm a better literary author than a spec-fic author. It's just what happens to come out when I sit down to write.

I think the good writing transcends these labels anyway. Kelly Link, George Saunders, and Adam Johnson are good examples of this.

lacygnette said:

I'm memorizing all your names, fellow lit-fic writers. Sometimes AW, though full of great info, feels a little lonely in that respect. And if any of you would like to exchange crits, I'm up for it.

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I'm game. I'm working on three stories as we speak. They may work, they may not, but by damn I'm writing them. Would be nice to have another set of eyes on them.

Had an idea and was too lazy to make it into a graphic novel.

Actually, I've been writing since I was 5 or 6 years old. Of course it was just short fairy stories.
When I was a kid I loved listening to my granny reading me "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz".
I think that novel inspired me for writing my first story.

I don't think I'd ever decided. A lot of the books that I got really excited about when I was a teenager were mostly contemporary literary novels. Franzen, Wallace, Eugenides, Zadie Smith. I had known that I wanted to write from a very youn age, but I think these novels seemed to have more to offer than most, and so they became the stars by which I steer.

I am another who just wrote what I like then found out it is classed as literature fiction. I have several ideas I want to write then a novel based in the future I am not sure if that will be classed the same.