I can’t tell you how many times in the past month I’ve heard people in the literary community deride zombie stories. Apparently, everybody’s writing them. Every undergraduate in every creative writing class in the country has written a story about zombies. Ninety-nine percent of submissions received by literary journals are zombie stories. Jane Austen + Zombies = $$. Zombies are the new vampires. Zombies are jokes.

This is fun!

I have a confession. This summer, I wrote a zombie story. I love this story. A few weeks ago I attended a writers’ conference where I had an opportunity to read my work to a group of self-proclaimed “literary writers.” I almost read the zombie story. But to better fit the time limit, I decided to read a shorter piece – a serious story about a grieving family. You can’t imagine my relief as all week I sat through craft lectures and panels and lunches with writers in which everyone – faculty, students, publishers – made cracks about the written proliferation of the poor, decrepit, lumbering living-dead.

There is a belief held by many that literary fiction should be serious, despite many great authors who have proven that literary fiction and fun can co-exist with hilarious and devastating results. I understand as writers we want to be original. I understand why people may want to avoid the trappings of genre fiction. And I understand there are many unoriginal, guts-thrashing, brain-gorging zombie stories out there. My concern is that we as writers, as students of writing, are being encouraged to pursue only serious material for our stories. Certainly no one who attended this conference is going to sit down and write Zombies Discuss Politics over Luncheon anytime soon.

Me, I don’t see enough zombie stories. Instead, I see the written proliferation of lonely well-meaning individuals with serious jobs and serious concerns and seriously troubled relationships. These serious characters with serious feelings are faced with serious life events they must respond to or ignore, but always in a serious manner.

I understand there is a lot of suffering in this world, and to write with a light heart may feel like denying the suffering, or laughing at it. But I wonder what it would be like if we took ourselves less seriously. If we could get over concerns about genre and “worthy topics” and writing fiction similar to the kind we see published in the more traditional of literary journals. I wonder if other writers ever ask themselves: should writing be fun? Could it be fun?