Beginners' Four Faults

Getting paid to write is surely the reverse of selling out. I'd quite happily work on the Hardy Boy series. But when it comes to my own original work I struggle and just can't stick to a genre - I did try.

MWagner said:
You can be passionate and still write for an audience. Take J.K. Rowling. She had incredible success writing for children. Presumably, she was deliberately seeking to write something that would be enjoyed by children, and not just tapping away with no notion of who might read the stories. Then, after she sold millions of books and had no need for more money, she wrote adult novels under a different name. .
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She says she didn't write it specifically for children.

Her own accounts say that Harry Potter appeared to her fully dressed on a train journey. I get that - it's how my Socrates showed up and told me off for drowning him. Enid Blyton didn't start out writing for children she was, and this bit might be urban legend, told children responded better to her articles for adults than the adults did.

The only stories I write specifically for children are the ones I write for my children, but even then it's more about letting rip with my imagination.
 
I sure am guilty of the 2nd one, but I guess that's exactly what editing is for.
 
AnyaKimlin said:
She says she didn't write it specifically for children.
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OK. But she wrote those books in a very different voice and style than she employed for her subsequent 'literary' adult novel, and the crime novels she writes under the name Robert Galbraith. Three different voices. Three different genres. Three different audiences. Surely those choices were deliberate?
 
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MWagner said:
OK. But she wrote those books in a very different voice and style than she employed for her subsequent 'literary' adult novel, and the crime novels she writes under the name Robert Galbraith. Three different voices. Three different genres. Three different audiences. Surely those choices were deliberate?
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Not necessarily. She may have made the choices consciously or she may have ended up with a character she then worked with. Unlike myself she can write what she want. I can't speak for JK Rowling as her process is different to my own. However, my voice changes, depending on the character and they aren't conscious choices. And I've yet to get the genre of a novel right when I've started to write it.

Angus (17 year old prince then king) is more impulsive and relaxed - he also swears quite a bit and editing that down is a conscious choice. (not quite epic fantasy)
Socrates (7, 30 odd and 120) is uncomfortable in his own skin. He's quite childlike and naive but can kill with little conscious. His voice alternates between intelligence and wisdom, viciousness and pure joy. (same world/series as above)
Ian Black (68 year old former senior police officer who discovers he is a demon hunter) is quite dark, depressing and dour in feel. His son John Black (senior psychologist and surgeon to the paranormal) is different again and he's in the same book. (urban fantasy)
Cece Garrett (17 year old suffragette) is unswervingly positive, her language is far more flowery than my usual comfort zone. (cosy mystery)
Joe Cream and Tim Black (middle aged police officers) they have a more generic voice in third person that works for them. Tim's does have a giggly tone to the serious Joe's but there is a more omni feel the the narrative POV. (detective story)
Christopher Wren (Kit) (14 year old) his voice is dark, snarky but incredibly resourceful and hopeful. (YA urban fantasy)
Rosalie Glow (in her thirties and a dominatrix with a porn empire) and Jake Robinson (also thirties is a reporter on a local paper and the son of a heavily religious man) their voices in the same book are starkly different because of their personalities but the tone of the whole thing is lighter than any of my other writings. It's a flat out kinky piece I wrote as the result of a challenge. There's enough kink to be porn but it needs a bit more bonking to fit the genre. Actually these stories just need a little tarting up to be self published.
Wynter James (21) is snarky, dark and has little optimism. Her life has been destroyed by Fibromyalgia. In the space of three months she has gone from being sporty and a popular student to staring at her bedroom ceiling with the highlights of her day being drooling, smelling dinner she can't eat and getting stuck on the toilet. (I think it would be mainstream/literary in nature)
Reverend Allsopp (not sure of his age it's set in the 18th Century) is a horror based on the diary of a vicar who goes slowly mad or is he possessed. (horror)


And there are others.
 
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I would never say it was selling out to write a certain kind of story, as long as you are true to yourself in the way you write it. Think of the great master painters of the past, like Rembrandt and Rubens -- when they accepted a commission to do somebody's portrait instead of spending all their time on subjects they wanted to paint, did they sell out? Are the paintings they produced any less masterpieces? The artists painted what they were paid to paint, but they painted them in their own way, in their own respective distinctive styles. The spark that makes each painting special comes from the artist. Someone with such prodigious talent and genius can do that: be told what to create, but in the creation make it entirely their own.

Most writers have more than one story they would like to write buzzing around in their brains. And if they want a career then they would be smart to choose, from those stories, to write the one that has the most chance of commercial success. It's still their story, it's still something they can put their passion into, if they write it in their own way. And it is going to be a better that way than if they tried a stilted imitation of somebody else's style and approach.

And it's also true that a writer may use a different style when writing different books, especially if they are writing in more than one genre or if some of their books are for children and some are for adults. It's the same as being able to write more than one story or more than one kind of story, being able to adapt your style to fit the books you are writing. Style and story should work together. Still, unless the writer keeps his or her mind on the market when making every decision as they write, the story and the style will still have something there that is uniquely their own (and that will probably turn up, in some guise, in their other books, too).

Work-for-hire where you are supposed to write in somebody else's setting and with somebody else's characters in a style that blends with all the other books by other writers who have contributed to the series, that's a different thing altogether. But I wouldn't say it was selling out, any more than if they put their writing skills to use writing advertising jingles or wrote tech manuals to support themselves while writing their own books.
 
Yep guilty as charged, currently awaiting sentencing on all four counts. I starting writing a year ago for fun, had lots of ideas, so decided to have a go at writing a sci-fi/fantasy novel. At fifty thousand words friends and family enjoyed reading what I'd produced thus far. I was pleased with myself, thought it was pretty good.

Then I was lured by the challenge of short story writing. I've submitted six in total, found it hard at first to condense my writing but really enjoyed the challenge. I've restarted my novel and what I thought was brilliant, after six months of short story writing now seems, well, not so brilliant. As I said 'guilty on all four counts'. I'm glad I set the novel to one side. It has allowed me to learn some of the basics through practice. I saw a difference with each story I wrote so I understand when someone talks about 'learning your trade'.

I have the luxury of writing for my own enjoyment which means I produce stories that I would like to read. The thought of someone else enjoying my writing really 'tickles me', so I write with a commercial awareness and an open mind. One day it will happen, until then I'll just have to serve my time. (Please send file or hack saw, require early release from sentence for 'crimes against writing'.)
 
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