THE GENRE OF YOU

“What kind of writer do you want to be?” That question was asked of me when I was 13. I’d been dragged along to a party at a penthouse in New York City. It was 1971 and the person asking the question was the legendary writer Richard Matheson, author of I Am Legend, What Dreams May Come, The Shrinking Man, and more than a dozen episodes of the original Twilight Zone.

Before I could answer, another of the writers at the party—national treasure Ray Bradbury—touched my shoulder and said, “Be careful, young man. That question’s a trap.”

And so it was.

I’d been brought to the party by my middle-school librarian, who was the secretary for a club of professional writers. It was a very loose structure, with get-togethers forming whenever enough heavy hitters were in town.

So, what was the trap? I found out when I did not step into it. “I don’t know,” I said. “A lot of things, I guess.”

Matheson beamed a great smile. “Good answer!” he said, then explained why. “A genre is something that matters to the people in marketing. It doesn’t matter much to me. It doesn’t matter to Ray. We write what we want to write and then figure out how