![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
How to write for yourself
Dec. 9th, 2021 05:39 pmI've heard other authors recommend always running your new book ideas by your agent before you draft them, in case your agent thinks the book is a bad idea, so you won't waste time on a project that will ultimately get trunked or shelved.
I understand that reasoning, but I've decided not to do that, for several reasons:
1) I'm the kind of writer who comes up with a ton of ideas, but will turn very few of those into finished novels. Oftentimes, I find that it takes 5k, 10k, or even 20k words before I realize that I'm either not the right writer for this idea or I don't have enough of an emotional connection to the story to finish the draft. Because of this, I don't want to pitch my agent an awesome idea and then later go "Sorry, I gave up on it..." For me, that's kind of embarrassing. I'd rather tell my agent when I'm at least 20k words in and I'm confident I can actually finish writing the story.
2) If I absolutely love a story idea and am determined to write it for myself, I don't really want to discuss whether it's marketable or not while I'm drafting.
For example, I have a science fantasy story that I'd like to work on once I've finished my current fantasy novel. I don't know if it's really all that pitchable. But I adore the main character, who is a walking disaster incompetent protagonist, and his relationship with the love interest, who is arrogant and infuriating and secretive. I also love the idea of using this story to explore Chinese myths about demons and ghosts.
In other words, I want to write this story for myself.
And yes, that's hard, because being a career writer means constantly agonizing over the clash between art and business. As much as I want to put out great art, authors can't get published if publishers think their books won't sell.
But I have a day job anyway; I'm not dependent on the writing market to make a living. And because of that, I'm a writer because it's what I love to do and because I want to be proud of the stories I put out into the world.
(Ideally, I'd get a book deal and establish myself in the SFF market, and then hopefully after that, publishers might be more receptive to my epic science fantasy idea. But will that happen? Who knows?)
So that's how I'm trying to balance still being able to write for myself and the fact that writing is now my career.
I understand that reasoning, but I've decided not to do that, for several reasons:
1) I'm the kind of writer who comes up with a ton of ideas, but will turn very few of those into finished novels. Oftentimes, I find that it takes 5k, 10k, or even 20k words before I realize that I'm either not the right writer for this idea or I don't have enough of an emotional connection to the story to finish the draft. Because of this, I don't want to pitch my agent an awesome idea and then later go "Sorry, I gave up on it..." For me, that's kind of embarrassing. I'd rather tell my agent when I'm at least 20k words in and I'm confident I can actually finish writing the story.
2) If I absolutely love a story idea and am determined to write it for myself, I don't really want to discuss whether it's marketable or not while I'm drafting.
For example, I have a science fantasy story that I'd like to work on once I've finished my current fantasy novel. I don't know if it's really all that pitchable. But I adore the main character, who is a walking disaster incompetent protagonist, and his relationship with the love interest, who is arrogant and infuriating and secretive. I also love the idea of using this story to explore Chinese myths about demons and ghosts.
In other words, I want to write this story for myself.
And yes, that's hard, because being a career writer means constantly agonizing over the clash between art and business. As much as I want to put out great art, authors can't get published if publishers think their books won't sell.
But I have a day job anyway; I'm not dependent on the writing market to make a living. And because of that, I'm a writer because it's what I love to do and because I want to be proud of the stories I put out into the world.
(Ideally, I'd get a book deal and establish myself in the SFF market, and then hopefully after that, publishers might be more receptive to my epic science fantasy idea. But will that happen? Who knows?)
So that's how I'm trying to balance still being able to write for myself and the fact that writing is now my career.
