When I was in middle school, I read a lot of fiction to pass the time. Most of it was the likes of Stephen King and other horror writers who wrote about fairly macabre things. And because I aspired to be a writer, I did everything I could to emulate their styles. The plots I devised were about weird and supernatural things happening to ordinary people in otherwise ordinary circumstances. I was writing for the horror genre, and my awareness of this fact drove me to develop the storyline and the characters in a certain way, that served that particular genre.

A much better writer than me named Kurt Vonnegut used to write books, about stuff that mattered, and in a way that was very witty and insightful. Early on, people pegged him as a writer of science fiction. But he always insisted that he never set out to write science fiction, and anyone who's ever read one of his books knows that his books reach farther and wider than what typical science fiction offers.

People have a much easy time with something that's labeled or categorized. It serves as a heuristic, so we quickly know how to judge it. Apparently we're more comfortable with things when we can stamp them with a stereotype.

There are lots of good reasons for setting out to write for a particular genre; if you define your audience, then you know who to market to, and you know how to engage them, shock them, or delight them. But true innovation, and truly important and meaningful art, almost certainly happens when the artist is working without a particular category in mind.