Writing is One Big Genre Soup

by Ellie Cameron

Photo by Sigmund on Unsplash

It’s a winter night in your childhood, you have a cold. Snow is falling; it’s almost as icy in the house as outside. Someone--your parent, grandparent, sibling, guardian--brings you a steaming bowl. You ask what’s in it, receive a single word response. Soup. You wonder what kind, try to decide if you’re hoping it’s tomato, chicken noodle, alphabet, chowder. Who knows? Broth and some floating ingredients, it could be anything. It’s all soup.

Whenever I tell someone I’m a writer, their first question is almost always, What do you write? If the person is also a writer, I can usually speed through the ever-growing list: I write mostly poetry and comedy, but also some fiction, and I have this novel idea, and I like to write essays and might shoot for a memoir, but I also do academic writing. Mostly poetry and comedy, though. If the person isn’t a writer, the answer might shorten to a noncommittal I dabble in everything, or expand beyond my control into a rambling explanation, all depending on how much interest they show. No version of these answers ever feels completely honest, to them or myself, because my writing is rarely adhering to one form or the other. My writing is made up of each of those genres and more, taking elements from each and tossing them in the pot simmering on the stove. My own homemade writing soup. ​

Store-bought, pre-canned genre designations can be a useful ingredient for both the beginning and experienced writer. It would be difficult to argue against the importance of genre for creators and consumers alike. That said, there comes a point where the homemade designations just taste better. The recipes that must be precluded with the creator’s name: That’s Grandma Carol’s tomato soup; that’s some Emily Dickinson writing. Some of our best writing is the kind that transcends genres, morphs conventions, and defies labels. The kind that might start as essay but quickly absorbs poetry into the language and descriptions, comedy to break up a heavy topic, fiction to intuit forgotten dialogue. By the end, you have something boundless, undefinable, and powerful.

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Enter cross-genre writing, commonly going by aliases of “hybrid” or “multi-genre." These terms are sometimes used in a variety of ways. They might be used to describe writing (more accurately, creating in any form) that utilizes multiple modes of communication, like a poem written through PowerPoint; they might mean writing that is approached through a mix of styles and strategies; or they might mean writing that blends genres. I’m not here to tell anyone their definition is incorrect, but let’s focus on blending genres. ​

Any act of creation pushes boundaries–art, cooking, and yes, even writing–as it seeks to grow and evolve; it’s necessarily boundless, but bounds have their place.

Any act of creation pushes boundaries--art, cooking, and yes, even writing--as it seeks to grow and evolve; it’s necessarily boundless, but bounds have their place. For example, Glassworks accepts submissions of prose poetry, flash fiction, and micro essays for publication in flash glass, but these categories are nearly arbitrary. Oftentimes, the pieces that are accepted and published push the boundaries of those genres, leaving even the editorial team unsure of how to categorize them for online sorting. To accommodate the needs of the digital-sphere as well as the ever-shifting nature of writing, this system of genre categorization remains broad and as loosely defined as possible. ​

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The same room is necessary for writing to continue to grow and evolve. Everyone who sits down to write has a different set of experiences, a different relationship with genres of writing, and a different recipe they plan to work from. In an interview about hybrid writing, poet and short story writer Tania Hershman responds to a question about structure, saying, “There really are no rules, that’s my philosophy, it’s whatever serves the story you want to tell. … Each writer finds what works for them. Try something, then try something else.” ​

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if your writing doesn’t fit into traditional genres.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if your writing doesn’t fit into traditional genres. Let your poems tell fairy tales. Let your essays be fictional. And let it all be both funny and dark. What makes a piece of writing stand out from the rest is experimentation, evolution, and boundless creation, none of which can occur if we fail to move past strict categorization. After all, the best writing is just one big genre soup.