TED Talk to Be. Some Day.

All righty. BANG. Some far reaching miracle has occurred and there I am. Staring at an invitation to give  TED talk somewhere. Here's what that would look like. Not that, you know, I've planned it out or anything.

TITLE: The World Inside Us

High Concept: George Lucas had it wrong. The Force isn't what permeates us and binds the galaxy together. It's story. Story is the unifying force, across culture, time, and all possibility.

*Insert cheesy story here about how here I am, an author. Four published novels, short stories, a novella, a couple of awards to put on my shelf. But I was a lonely little kid who didn't really fit in anywhere. I didn't fit this world. It didn't fit me. And I didn't seem to be growing in the right directions to have any hope that the fit would improve. Then a relative handed me a box of worn paperback books, all by the same author, Andre Norton. I was maybe 10. "Read these," my aunt said. Those stories saved me. I learned that not fitting the world made me something specific and peculiar. It made me a story-teller. End slightly humorous, cheesy story.*

Talk Brief (this is the condensed idea set - yet to be fleshed out because - you know - no invite as yet...)

What unites all of human-kind? Stories. What defines our psychology? Stories. What connects us to our ancestors - the ones reaching up to etch something into the rock wall of a cave? Stories. What, if you believe in this sort of thing, connects you to the past lives you lived across history? Yep. And what is it that links you to the vast stretch of future - the past your mortal existence? Right again.

Brief history of the origin of language - really brief. Segway to lying as predating actual proto-language (behavioral experiments done with chimps who learn muffle food calls - essentially lying to their troops). What is story - combination of pretending and communication - so by this definition, cave paintings are stories. Oral tales, ballads, a shaman's vision quest or journey into the underworld. All story. In as much as dreams are stories, we can claim to be connected by story to every living thing that dreams. (more brief data here)

Universality of emotion as connector and story as a means of evoking emotion

Pretending. Imagination. That's the important part. That's the part that connects us across all time, space and dimension. That lonely little kid who didn't quite fit the world? She never really did settle in. She still doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up. EVERYTHING. Astronaut. Veterinarian. Rock star. Movie star. Lawyer. Doctor. All of it. So her job is clear. BE all of it. In story. Try on all the hats. Step into the clothes for the space of 90k words. Be someone else in story. This is a sacred tradition of stepping out of your life and your world (shamanic traditions) in search of lessons among worlds not your own.

How does it connect you to past and future? You're imagining. Your ancestors imagined, your past life selves imagined, future generations will imagine. And it's likely that you're all imagining one another - what was life like/what will it be like ? How did/will it feel? For the brief moments your imaginations align, you make contact. What if there are infinite universes? Infinite copies of you? Right now, in some other universe, you are a doctor. An astronaut. A great artist of some kind. Every time you tell a story and try on one of those personalities or vocations, you connect.

Close: *Insert brief story about belonging as a demonstration of what the lonely kid learned by embracing story.* 

Story becomes art when it resonates with an audience as true. When your stories ring true, they reach across the world, across cultures and maybe even across time and space.

There it is. A rough draft from a disorganized brain.

Being a Multi-Genre Writer

The conference is over and I'm heading home this morning!

Last night my wonderful Kensington editor, Peter Senftleben, took us out to dinner at the Chart House at the Golden Nugget. Agent Pam and David came along, too. It was excellent and very fun.

This week's topic of conversation in the bordello is Jumping Genres. It's a funny one for me, since I'm the one in this group who probably writes in the most genres. If we had Spice-Girl style nicknames, I would be Multi-Genre Ho.

Which doesn't have much of a ring to it, huh?

(Back when I was still pitching my first novels and trying to get a fiction-publishing deal, an agent told me my books fell in the cracks between genres. My ever-loving and supportive friends started calling me the Crack Ho.)

At any rate I have written and published in:

Creative Nonfiction
Poetry
Literary Fiction
Magical Realism
Science Fiction
Fantasy
Sword & Sorcery
Fantasy Romance
Contemporary Romance
Erotic Romance
Erotic Fantasy

I'm also noodling a great idea for a kind of suspense/thriller something or other.

I kind of haven't met a genre I didn't like - they all have their seductive qualities. Really, I'll go home with any of them, as long as they treat me right.

It's not like I did this on purpose, however. In many ways, I think my "problem" is that I don't think in terms of genre. They're all just stories to me. This is possibly because there's not many books I don't enjoy - I read widely and eclectically. In my head, this becomes the kind of "soup" that Veronica and James mentioned in their posts last week.

Now, the standard advice to new writers is to concentrate on one genre, build your author brand there, and only branch out later. If ever. There are many cautionary tales of writers who stepped out of their branded genre to do something else and got slapped by readers. (Remember when Stephen King first wrote a Literary Fiction novel?)

I could never follow this advice.

And I used to feel kind of bad about it. I think that, in some ways, publishing in several genres did slow my trajectory. I don't have a author brand clearly associated with one genre.

However, looking back on my life, I see that this is very much who I am. I am Eclectic Girl. In college, I double-majored in Comparative Religious Studies and Biology - with enough credits for a theater minor. I'm not sure there's a genre I've never read. When I take those Type A vs Type B or Right Brain vs. Left Brain tests, I always get an even score of both.

This is who I am, apparently.

And now people are telling me that my brand is clear. That my stories all do have common elements, regardless of where they're shelved. Sure, I have some readers who only read my fantasy stuff and some who only read the contemporary stuff - but that's actually very cool. Something for everyone!

The topic title is an interesting choice, because it recalls the concept of "jumping genes." Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize for identifying this phenomenon, where genetic elements actually move from one sequence to another, essentially mixing things up. As far as fitness and natural selection are concerned, maximum heterogeneity (a variety of genes) is FAR more beneficial than homogeneity (genes that match). Basically it means that an individual with a lot of ability to adapt - for example, be able to change food sources - is more likely to survive than and individual with a very tight niche (think panda bears that can ONLY eat certain leaves).

After all, if you only write in one genre, what happens when that genre is no longer hot? You risk extinction as an author.

In the end, I really believe that genre is a marketing construction. It shouldn't be a straightjacket.

It's all about the story.