Business choices in writing
Everyone on LJ has probably seen the Richard Morgan post. It's here.
I have minor doubts about the over-all collegiality of any large group of writers, because, well, writers. But I really like his overall point, which is that we don't need to piss in the pool that we're swimming in in an attempt to hit the Other Guys. Because, well, we're all swimming in the same water, and it's icky.
I occasionally talk about the business of writing, which is not entirely like the business of publishing, and one of his points struck me enough that I wanted to talk a bit about it, because there is one quibble I have with his article.
"Want to make a shit-load of money? Want to make the bestseller lists? Then get on and write a three brick fantasy trilogy about a good hearted farm-boy who becomes a wizard or a warrior (or a space pilot) and defeats an evil empire."
I know that he is trying to make his larger point. I agree with the larger point: the market is what the market is, and you will probably do better if you write with an eye to the market.
But.
Writing a three-brick fantasy trilogy is not an option for a lot of writers, in part because they don't like reading them. If you don't like reading something, it shows in the writing. You may consider the type of book so anti-intellectual that you feel it can be tossed off with little effort, research or thought. I think this is wishful thinking (at best) and contempt for readers (at worst). There are an awful lot of 3 book fantasies that simply do not sell. Assuming that all you have to do is write one to make money? Wrong.
(And this leaves aside the point that for the most part, no one wants fantasy trilogy bricks anymore.)
If we all wanted to make money, the fiction we should be writing? Romance. Because romance outsells everything else. Bad romance numbers? Are our high midlist numbers. Seriously. They can drop a romance writer for numbers that would keep most of our genre's editors cautiously optimistic about your future career.
But we're not all writing romances. Why? Well, in my case, it's because I can't. Whatever it is that speaks most strongly to readers in a romance novel is not something that I understand well enough to work with. If it doesn't speak to me at all, how the heck am I supposed to be able to work with it in a way that will make it true for readers?
Same with the fantasy that Morgan is off the cuff about. I honestly don't think that you can write blazing bestsellers when your intent is a knock-off of something you simply don't respect.
However...
There are stories which will probably be more commercial, and stories which will probably be less so. If you're a writer who has -- as many of us do -- a wide range of stories that you could start writing right now, then an eye to the business of writing (as opposed to the art), is in my opinion a practical, even a good, thing.
But we don't all have the same range of stories. If, for instance, hard sf was the darling of the market at the moment, I would heave a small sigh, and keep writing; if horror were the Next Big Thing, I would be quietly writing in my corner of Old Small Thing, because stories that would fit the horror genre are not the stories I have to tell.
Even if I felt any regret about this, it wouldn't matter. Those are not my stories. And I think it's absolutely essential, no matter what you're writing, that you write your stories. My concept of writing-as-business-move is more about the intersection of two sets: Hard-headed career decisions and Stories I want to tell. If you want to wander outside of this intersection, it's my humble opinion that you'll do better in the end in the Stories I want to tell set.
I write two different types of books at the moment: The West novels and the Sagara novels (sometimes I call them the DAW and Luna novels). The West novels are the books that I want to read, and if I could only choose one type of novel to read on the desert island, it would be books like those. People have asked me if I'm tired of them; I'm not. I'll probably be tired of them when the story is finished, if then.
The Sagara novels are books I like to read. (Actually, they're the novel version of what I would write if I were writing manga, because in some ways, they have the emotional immediacy and the internal visualization of manga or anime to me; I see them in the color palettes of anime, but whole conversations and pauses are manga pauses. And Bishounen. I digress.) They're my attempt to write a story that is both mine and more accessible.
Because no one writes fantasy to be inaccessible, but in my case, it happens anyway =/.
I thought, of all the stories that I could write, the Cast books had the potential for the broadest appeal (there are two other worlds, one still percolating in the background, but with an entirely different tone and texture). It would probably have made more sense to try a contemporary/urban series, given this market. But... I didn't have one of those until much, much later, and I didn't have the emotional kernel of something that could become one of those, either.
Of course, the theory of accessible and the fact of it isn't decided by me. It's decided by readers. I chose the story that I thought would have the broadest appeal, I wrote it -- but you know? I could have been entirely wrong. It's something that the reading market determines and judges. But the decision to write the Cast novels was based entirely on what I thought would have the best chance at reaching the widest audience. I looked over the possible things I would enjoy writing (for a value of enjoy that includes the inevitable middle-of-the-book), and I chose the one that I thought would work best in that context.
But I remember reading a Neal Stephenson interview a while ago (maybe in Locus) in which he said he had decided to write his co-authored thrillers because they would be the money-makers, and the money-making writing would free him up to write the books he really, really wanted to write.
He did both -- but the books that sold were, of course, the books that he really, really wanted to write.
Sometimes it happens that way. That's probably the very best thing that can happen to a writer, imho. Sometimes, it doesn't, which is probably the hardest thing to accept as a writer.
The fact that it doesn't, more often than not, can lead to all kinds of Unfortunate Author Behaviour and insecurities, some of which causes people to -- yes! -- spit on other authors and their readers. And given that you want those readers, spitting on the books they do like does not seem a reasonable way to reach them, imho.
I have minor doubts about the over-all collegiality of any large group of writers, because, well, writers. But I really like his overall point, which is that we don't need to piss in the pool that we're swimming in in an attempt to hit the Other Guys. Because, well, we're all swimming in the same water, and it's icky.
I occasionally talk about the business of writing, which is not entirely like the business of publishing, and one of his points struck me enough that I wanted to talk a bit about it, because there is one quibble I have with his article.
"Want to make a shit-load of money? Want to make the bestseller lists? Then get on and write a three brick fantasy trilogy about a good hearted farm-boy who becomes a wizard or a warrior (or a space pilot) and defeats an evil empire."
I know that he is trying to make his larger point. I agree with the larger point: the market is what the market is, and you will probably do better if you write with an eye to the market.
But.
Writing a three-brick fantasy trilogy is not an option for a lot of writers, in part because they don't like reading them. If you don't like reading something, it shows in the writing. You may consider the type of book so anti-intellectual that you feel it can be tossed off with little effort, research or thought. I think this is wishful thinking (at best) and contempt for readers (at worst). There are an awful lot of 3 book fantasies that simply do not sell. Assuming that all you have to do is write one to make money? Wrong.
(And this leaves aside the point that for the most part, no one wants fantasy trilogy bricks anymore.)
If we all wanted to make money, the fiction we should be writing? Romance. Because romance outsells everything else. Bad romance numbers? Are our high midlist numbers. Seriously. They can drop a romance writer for numbers that would keep most of our genre's editors cautiously optimistic about your future career.
But we're not all writing romances. Why? Well, in my case, it's because I can't. Whatever it is that speaks most strongly to readers in a romance novel is not something that I understand well enough to work with. If it doesn't speak to me at all, how the heck am I supposed to be able to work with it in a way that will make it true for readers?
Same with the fantasy that Morgan is off the cuff about. I honestly don't think that you can write blazing bestsellers when your intent is a knock-off of something you simply don't respect.
However...
There are stories which will probably be more commercial, and stories which will probably be less so. If you're a writer who has -- as many of us do -- a wide range of stories that you could start writing right now, then an eye to the business of writing (as opposed to the art), is in my opinion a practical, even a good, thing.
But we don't all have the same range of stories. If, for instance, hard sf was the darling of the market at the moment, I would heave a small sigh, and keep writing; if horror were the Next Big Thing, I would be quietly writing in my corner of Old Small Thing, because stories that would fit the horror genre are not the stories I have to tell.
Even if I felt any regret about this, it wouldn't matter. Those are not my stories. And I think it's absolutely essential, no matter what you're writing, that you write your stories. My concept of writing-as-business-move is more about the intersection of two sets: Hard-headed career decisions and Stories I want to tell. If you want to wander outside of this intersection, it's my humble opinion that you'll do better in the end in the Stories I want to tell set.
I write two different types of books at the moment: The West novels and the Sagara novels (sometimes I call them the DAW and Luna novels). The West novels are the books that I want to read, and if I could only choose one type of novel to read on the desert island, it would be books like those. People have asked me if I'm tired of them; I'm not. I'll probably be tired of them when the story is finished, if then.
The Sagara novels are books I like to read. (Actually, they're the novel version of what I would write if I were writing manga, because in some ways, they have the emotional immediacy and the internal visualization of manga or anime to me; I see them in the color palettes of anime, but whole conversations and pauses are manga pauses. And Bishounen. I digress.) They're my attempt to write a story that is both mine and more accessible.
Because no one writes fantasy to be inaccessible, but in my case, it happens anyway =/.
I thought, of all the stories that I could write, the Cast books had the potential for the broadest appeal (there are two other worlds, one still percolating in the background, but with an entirely different tone and texture). It would probably have made more sense to try a contemporary/urban series, given this market. But... I didn't have one of those until much, much later, and I didn't have the emotional kernel of something that could become one of those, either.
Of course, the theory of accessible and the fact of it isn't decided by me. It's decided by readers. I chose the story that I thought would have the broadest appeal, I wrote it -- but you know? I could have been entirely wrong. It's something that the reading market determines and judges. But the decision to write the Cast novels was based entirely on what I thought would have the best chance at reaching the widest audience. I looked over the possible things I would enjoy writing (for a value of enjoy that includes the inevitable middle-of-the-book), and I chose the one that I thought would work best in that context.
But I remember reading a Neal Stephenson interview a while ago (maybe in Locus) in which he said he had decided to write his co-authored thrillers because they would be the money-makers, and the money-making writing would free him up to write the books he really, really wanted to write.
He did both -- but the books that sold were, of course, the books that he really, really wanted to write.
Sometimes it happens that way. That's probably the very best thing that can happen to a writer, imho. Sometimes, it doesn't, which is probably the hardest thing to accept as a writer.
The fact that it doesn't, more often than not, can lead to all kinds of Unfortunate Author Behaviour and insecurities, some of which causes people to -- yes! -- spit on other authors and their readers. And given that you want those readers, spitting on the books they do like does not seem a reasonable way to reach them, imho.