There is something deeply human about putting things into boxes. We do it all the time. It is how we make the world hang together. Without boxes, we would drown in chaos. We would not be able to find our way around a supermarket, understand an annual tax statement, build a hospital, run a business, or find a book in a library. Boxes are the furniture of civilization. They make it possible to organize things so that we can quickly find and use them.
Much of our growth and prosperity is built on the ability to systematize, categorize, and standardize. We divide, sort, measure, and compare. It makes us efficient. It enables us to treat many people more or less equally and more or less fairly. It is not perfect, but the alternative is worse.
I have experienced for myself how powerful a box can be when it works.
In the Danish healthcare system, we have cancer pathways. They are defined according to specific criteria. If you fit into them, things move quickly. The suspicion triggers a process. The system knows what must happen. Someone has decided in advance which symptoms belong in which box, and what treatment that box requires. When you are standing there as a patient, it is an enormous relief. You do not have to invent your own way through the system. You are lifted onto a track, and the train moves. Fast.
I have tried it. It works.
When boxes help us
That is why it is too easy simply to sneer at boxes. They save lives. They save time. They create overview. They enable complex organizations to act. No one wants a world without categories.
But there is a price.
Because what does not fit into the box has a hard time.
In a library, books cannot simply be arranged alphabetically by the author’s surname. That would be impractical. Readers are not only looking for an author, although many do. They are looking for a particular kind of information or experience. They want to know whether a book is a crime novel, a thriller, a biography, fantasy, romance, a business book, a cookbook, or a children’s book. They are looking for something they already believe they can use or enjoy. Or they are trying to avoid something they have decided they cannot be bothered with.
That is entirely understandable. We all have limited time. We use categories to reduce the risk of wasting it. When I walk into a bookstore, I too orient myself by the signs. I too have my habits, my preferences, and my prejudices. I do not approach the shelves innocently. I arrive with expectations.
The book’s box is not always the story’s home
But this is where my problem begins.
Because a book is not always one thing. A life is not one thing. A real story is rarely so considerate that it stays within the book trade’s shelf labels.
Reality mixes genres without asking permission. It can be as suspenseful as a thriller, as instructive as a business book, as personal as a memoir, as revealing as a roman à clef, and as structured as a case study. It can be about work and family, illness and strategy, deception and loyalty, money and morality, love and power — all in one and the same story.
That fits poorly with a system that would prefer to make do with a single label.
Some authors have understood this condition and write directly into a category.
That can be professional, disciplined, and artistically strong. A crime writer knows that there must be a mystery, an investigation, clues, red herrings, and a resolution. A romance writer knows which emotional fluctuations readers expect. A business writer knows that the reader is looking for models, experiences, advice, and conclusions that can be used on Monday morning.
When you write for a category, you enter into a standard contract with the reader. The reader has a rough idea of what is being bought. The author has a rough idea of what must be delivered. The publisher knows how the book should be presented. The bookseller knows where it should stand. The reviewer knows which other books it can be compared with. The algorithm knows who it should be shown to.
It is efficient. It makes commercial sense. It makes marketing much easier.
When the story refuses to obey
But what does the author do who cannot or will not write like that?
What do you do when you are not writing with the question: Which category must the book fit into? But rather with an unease, an experience, a story that will not loosen its grip? What do you do when the material comes from real life and refuses to settle neatly into one drawer?
I cannot write for a category. I have tried. It does not work.
When I try, the text dies. It loses its necessity. If I begin to write according to an imagined need in the market instead of according to what the story demands, I no longer hear the characters, situations, and conflicts clearly. I hear only the question: What does the reader expect from my book?
Of course I have to think about the reader. I am not writing private diaries with a lock on them. They must be readable by others. They must have form, rhythm, clarity, and momentum. They must make an effort to communicate their messages. But there is a difference between writing with the reader by the hand and writing with the marketing department on your shoulder.
The price of writing across categories
I have to write what my heart and mind are filled with. Even if it lands across more categories than libraries and book portals allow. I have to follow the material as it actually reveals itself. If there is the suspense of a thriller in the story, it must be there. If there is the insight of a business book into organizations, leadership, sales, or power, that must be there too. If there is something autobiographical, it must not be hidden. If there is something socially critical, it must not be removed simply because the book then becomes harder to place.
The price comes later.
It comes when the book has to be explained.
“Is it a thriller?” an acquaintance asks.
“Yes, in a way,” I answer.
“Oh,” the person says. “I don’t read thrillers.”
Another asks:
“Is it a business book?”
“Yes, it actually is,” I answer.
“I don’t feel like reading business books in my spare time.”
Both reactions are entirely reasonable. And both are a little tragic. Because they do not reject the book because of its content, quality, language, or relevance. They reject it because of the box. Not the specific book, but the label. Not the story, but the shelf.
First the book, then the box
This is where the help offered by categories becomes a limitation. They protect us from what we do not want, but they can also protect us from what is surprising. They help us find what we are looking for, but they can prevent us from discovering what we did not know we needed — or at least might benefit from.
The author’s challenge, therefore, is not only to write the book. It is to find a language for the book afterwards. A language that does not betray its complexity, but also does not drown the reader in qualifications. “It is a mixture of…” is rarely a strong sales line. “In a way” is not either. The market rewards clarity. Boxes reward clarity. What is unclear is allowed to stand somewhat in its own way.
Even so, some books must insist on being exactly that: across categories.
Perhaps because life itself is across categories.
We live in categories, but we are not categories. We are people. We are athletes, musicians, friends, customers, patients, parents, helpers, colleagues, leaders, readers, competitors, victims, liars, and witnesses — often at the same time. Our stories contain more than one motive. That is why literature must sometimes resist the systems that otherwise help us find it.
I accept the boxes. I know why they exist. I have benefited from them myself, including when it truly mattered. But as an author, I cannot always live inside them.
I have to write the manuscript first.
Weed control
Perhaps greater demands are placed on a book that positions itself across the boxes? I think that is reasonable, and therefore I use this Process:
Once the manuscript has been written, the book is far from finished. It has only reached level M0: the first draft, where the story has been allowed to come out, even when it runs off in several directions at once.
This is where the alpha readers come in.
They are not reading a finished book. They are reading the first draft with open eyes and necessary distance. They see where the text is alive, where it loses direction, where it repeats itself, and where something important has not yet been unfolded. With their reactions in mind, I write M1.
Only then does the editor enter. Not to force the book down into a particular box, but to help it become the book it is trying to be.
The editor looks more closely at structure, rhythm, momentum, ambiguities, and excess.
Out of that dialogue comes M2, which forms the basis for the audiobook.
And then something special happens: when the text is read aloud, it reveals its own linguistic knots. Sentences that looked sensible on the screen can stumble in the mouth. The rhythm may limp. Repetitions can suddenly be heard. Those corrections become M3, which is proofread and finally becomes M4: the finished manuscript.
That is how chaos is slowly made readable. Not by the story losing its will to move across categories, but by receiving enough resistance to carry a reader all the way through. Even if it still does not fit into any box.
