Write what you love...unless nobody wants to read it?

[Karapace]

Does anybody here think hard about the commercial viability of their WIPs?

A string of pretty encouraging rejections (but yet ultimately still rejections) have made me think whether 'write what you love' is actually good advice or not. I've written a book that I love dearly, but what if nobody else wants to read it? It's not bad writing - plenty of people have told me so. It's just...neither here nor there, and probably doomed to sit unsold and unloved in my 'Complete' folder on my computer for the rest of eternity.

Equally, of course, there's no point writing something you don't feel anything for just in the hope that it fits in with 'what's hot' in an indistinct future.

Thoughts?

I do in the sense that I think my work is commerially viable on the grounds that I enjoy it, even if it is not easy to catagorise. I write what I like to read and feel that there are others out there who like to read the same, they are either looking for it or they just don't know it yet. Sometimes it takes a while to find your audience.

The Most-Rejected Books of All Time

Tis (almost) the season for resolutions. If you’re a writer, here’s an idea: resolve to get rejected. 100 times this year, if you’re lucky. After all, some very famous books (and …

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[Toby Frost]

What about making *some* money. Just enough to live on, or enough to maybe vacation once in a while, or make not quite enough but you can supplement otherwise. The choice is rarely between riches and poverty.

I think this was much easier in the past, when the mid-list existed. A non-SF reader wouldn't have heard of some pretty successful SFF writers - Anne McCaffery, say - who could make a very decent living without the need for adaptations, merchandise and the like. That option has largely gone, thanks to self-publishing and the internet. Once again, hooray for the information revolution.

Moreover, I'm dissatisfied with all of my work most of the time. Not until I'm at the final version stage do I begin to approach "satisfied". As for loving what I do, that's not even on the table. I do what I do because I am compelled to do it. It's a kind of habit I neither can nor wish to break. Maybe there's another, clearer way to express this?

For me, the experience of writing is satisfying, but it's not "fun" as such. I think of a hierarchy of hobbies. that get increasingly throwaway and silly as they go. I am trying to write to a professional standard and, to put it bluntly, have got quite good (at least, publishable, which is a low hurdle!) because it's what I'd do for a living if I could. Then there's model painting: I try to do it well and to improve, but I will never be anywhere near top tier quality. And then there's TV and computer games, which don't have much in the way of creativity and are either interesting or a laugh.

I do think that there isn't a clear divide between "what you love" and "what's saleable". This is partly because someone will write a book about "magic greengrocers" or something which will do well, and then every agent and publisher will start desperately looking for "the next magic greengrocer". It's always possible - although mind-blowingly unlikely - that the random thing you wrote because you loved it will replace magic greengrocers.

 

[Astro Pen]

This can be a double edged sword.
Although not a commercial endeavour, each week our writers group set a random topic that we have to come up with a 1000-ish word story on. Sometimes I hate the topic, but find that once the imagination gets to work, even the most dire prompt will come up with a surprise. Last week the prompt was "The biscuit tray" OMG I cant do anything with that! I thought.
But in the end a great little children's story emerged.
Writing outside your usual box can be rewarding because you can run with a new perspective.
I'd say write at least as widely as you read and see what happens. You may tank or you may get a pleasant surprise, but seldom is it wasted effort, even if you simply learn what you can't do.

 

[The Big Peat]

I'd like to know why we've developed a society in which it's almost impossible for anyone to make a living (by which I mean enough money to live off, not a fortune) from producing high-quality entertainment.

Too many sellers, not enough buyers, and a business model that encourages the backers to put everything on red 23 and rig the game in that direction.

Although I do wonder just how different it was in the glory days of the midlist, and what percentage of the population makes a living off of entertainment today vs at various points in the past.



I was going to add a bit answering the general question of the thread but I think there's so many different permutations of the question at this point that I'm not quite sure what to say.

 

[The Big Peat]

Having stared closely at the OP (not that she'll be back to read this most like), and considered it in a general sense -

I think it is wise to try to avoid absolutes in this.

And to remember that most useful writing advice isn't about "Do X", it's about "if facing X, consider Y but maybe not Z".

If you write good stuff and you keep getting rejected? Then, yeah, maybe consider whether it's the ideas. Particularly if you're being told "boy I'd love to take this on but I don't think I can sell it". For some people it's "but this is my great idea I need it to happen" and this advice isn't much good but for those of us who are more Groucho Marx about the whole thing, maybe it is.

But it's also very obvious that working out which idea is actually the one that sells is a mug's game. Even some of the most unsellable sounding ideas of all time have found homes; obviously sellable ideas sail into the most treacherous waters in the genre in terms of competition; and the long tail of publishing means trends can change on you at any moment. So is it really worth the candle to think too hard about it?

I think it's at its most practical for writers who have published with some success and face the dilemma of "sell what's expected of you vs write what you want" because then you actually know which of your ideas sell and don't.

But there's no real practical advice other than "do what makes you happy".

To go back to thinking about it when you're querying though... you're probably better off using whatever time spent thinking about the book's marketability to earn some money to spend on the book's marketing. Harsh but true.

If you have an idea that just won't sell then yeah, start trying to sell something else, but don't think too hard about what that is other than it being something you think is amazing.