The Penguin

I'm no influential writer or editor, but I have been around the block a couple of times in both departments. Several obstacles to good writing seem to pop up, over and over again. I've made a quick catalog of the rookie mistakes I've seen, and hopefully my analysis is edifying: 1. Writing Genre The claim: "I don't write [insert genre here]. That's not where my imagination goes." It's all well and good to characterize yourself by the story you prefer. The problem comes in when you're so stuck in a genre rut, and limited by the confines of your particular hobbyhorse. I think the problem here is that writers forget that they write stories,  not genre.  In other words, they confuse the medium with the message. Think of stories as tetrapods - birds, mammals, or reptiles: they might have some huge differences between them, but as you dig down through their anatomy, you'll see that they have all the same basic parts. Whether swine or lizard, th...