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rainwatersparkContinuing the "traditional publishing is messing with my ability to write anything new" theme from my last post...
Part of me feels like that's the reason I can't commit to writing anything new right now, but another part of me wonders if it's an age thing. In my twenties, it felt very easy to just follow an idea and see where it went, without thinking too hard about what I would do with the finished book. It's how I ended up with Novel #2, which was completely unplanned and which I wrote between studying for the bar exam, and then just threw it into indie publishing. But that book continues to find an audience—while it definitely doesn't make much money, it was promoted by Book Riot and even by a book crate's Twitter account recently, and I am forever humbled that people continue to enjoy it.
But now, in my thirties, it feels way, way harder to think "let's just work on a project for fun." I can't start tinkering with a book idea without thinking "What are the comps? What's the pitch? Is traditional publishing going to want this?"
"If not, then what's the point of spending the time to write tens of thousands of words for it?"
(Sadly, I am not a fast writer. My personal record is 2 months to draft 60k words—which included a week of nothing to do at my day job so I could plug away at my book—and I still view that as a significant time commitment, or a long weekend to draft a 20k novella, which I doubt would carry over if the story were a novel.)
And...honestly, that feeling really sucks.
It sucks because, from a craft standpoint, I always want to become a better writer, and it's impossible to become a better writer without writing books. Even if those books ultimately suck.
But capitalism + the fragility of life has just drilled this thought into my head that it's not worth spending the time to write a book unless it will—or at least, unless I believe it will—materially pay off.
When I was in college, I wrote a novella that was a retelling of The Snow Queen. I can't explain why, but The Snow Queen is a fairytale that has always haunted me, that I keep wanting to retell. This morning, I woke up with an idea to retell it that could become a YA fantasy novel.
Except it would look like a YA fantasy novel from the 2010s, not what the market wants now.
And I had a haunted house idea last year; I even drafted 11k words for it. I reread the unfinished draft recently and found that the story still tugged at my heartstrings. But a part of me keeps feeling like it's DOA for traditional publishing because it features a male protagonist questioning his views of reality, when most horror protagonists appear to be female.
Sigh.
Part of me feels like that's the reason I can't commit to writing anything new right now, but another part of me wonders if it's an age thing. In my twenties, it felt very easy to just follow an idea and see where it went, without thinking too hard about what I would do with the finished book. It's how I ended up with Novel #2, which was completely unplanned and which I wrote between studying for the bar exam, and then just threw it into indie publishing. But that book continues to find an audience—while it definitely doesn't make much money, it was promoted by Book Riot and even by a book crate's Twitter account recently, and I am forever humbled that people continue to enjoy it.
But now, in my thirties, it feels way, way harder to think "let's just work on a project for fun." I can't start tinkering with a book idea without thinking "What are the comps? What's the pitch? Is traditional publishing going to want this?"
"If not, then what's the point of spending the time to write tens of thousands of words for it?"
(Sadly, I am not a fast writer. My personal record is 2 months to draft 60k words—which included a week of nothing to do at my day job so I could plug away at my book—and I still view that as a significant time commitment, or a long weekend to draft a 20k novella, which I doubt would carry over if the story were a novel.)
And...honestly, that feeling really sucks.
It sucks because, from a craft standpoint, I always want to become a better writer, and it's impossible to become a better writer without writing books. Even if those books ultimately suck.
But capitalism + the fragility of life has just drilled this thought into my head that it's not worth spending the time to write a book unless it will—or at least, unless I believe it will—materially pay off.
When I was in college, I wrote a novella that was a retelling of The Snow Queen. I can't explain why, but The Snow Queen is a fairytale that has always haunted me, that I keep wanting to retell. This morning, I woke up with an idea to retell it that could become a YA fantasy novel.
Except it would look like a YA fantasy novel from the 2010s, not what the market wants now.
And I had a haunted house idea last year; I even drafted 11k words for it. I reread the unfinished draft recently and found that the story still tugged at my heartstrings. But a part of me keeps feeling like it's DOA for traditional publishing because it features a male protagonist questioning his views of reality, when most horror protagonists appear to be female.
Sigh.
