How do you explain that every modifier before writer becomes another nail in the coffin of your hopes of writing what you want? What you care about?
So you look at the guy with the mike and you stare down the irate booksellers and you put your editor on hold, and you think I can explain. I can tell them that the one wonderful thing about being a writer is the freedom to explore all venues, the luxury… no, the responsibility… to work with the dreams the Muse sends you, to shape them to the best of your ability and to send them along whether a guaranteed readership is waiting or not; I can explain the compulsion to write a good book whether the cover artist knows what to do with it or not, explain the honor involved in trying new things despite the fact that the manager at the local B. Dalton's has racked your most recent novel in occult non-fiction and asked… no, ordered the distributor not to send any more books written by this obvious schizophrenic. I can explain all that. I can take every single reader, every defensive SF chauvinist and horror fan and snooty New York reviewer and sparrowfart reader of "serious fiction," and show them what being a writer means!
And then you look out at the guy with the mike, and you think Nahhh. And you say, "My next book'll be SF."
The next story is SF. I loved writing it. I loved returning to this universe when I finally used "Remembering Siri" as a starting point to write the 1,500 or so pages of HYPERION and THE FALL OF HYPERION.