We might go further. (For some) it is by the act of writing that we learn what we know. A Socratic dialogue with oneself, if you like. The business of piling word upon word, being constrained yet liberated by language, gives birth to ideas that will have otherwise remained beyond our ken. If I was going to write a novel, my thoughts about art (doing as one bloody well pleases) v marketability would be: I like doing what I bloody well please. The joy of doing what I please will be evident in my work. The novel will shine with joy and playfulness! If I was to write what pleases some other people but not myself, the work will become a chore and the novel will lose sparkle. Likely, I would not complete it. You cannot sell an unfinished novel. It is unmarketable. I would therefore write what I please since it is my only hope of producing a marketable novel.
I agree with this. I think of writing is a way of exploring myself. I learn what I believe in, and I can even teach myself to become a better, stronger, more confident and more emotionally open person by writing. Writing is like meditating on the page.
For me, it matters what I am writing. When I write short stories, I always shoot for creativity. For the two novels I am writing, I am writing one completely marketable (or at least I am trying) and the other is more balanced in terms of art vs marketbablity. Both of them follow a formula that has worked before.
I know people you write for the market and I don't see anything wrong with it. Some also write to a formula and I don't see anything wrong with that either. They still have to do a good job for it to sell. Whatever works for them is ok by me. I don't consider that a sell out, just doing what they feel they need to do.
Hi, I write for myself, so being as naturally modest as I am, I am writing for the intellectual elite!!! Cheers Greg.
The way I see it is because I am pretty young for a writer, I am trying for things that work. Once I have finished these projects, I have no doubt I will write something for myself and try something new. Right now though, I want to write something that is popular right now. Young adult books are very much the same when you look at them and I see no reason to break the trend. The other project is similar to A song of Ice and Fire as it has a big storyworld and lots of character and a very complex plot. That is the one that will be original.
Trying to figure out what will sell is a whole science in itself. It's not the easy way out as some may thing. It's easy to write when the only one you have to please is yourself. Please others is the hard part. The more people you look to please the harder it is and more talent it takes.
Depending on what I'm writing and how my day is going, I can quite easily sit and write all day long. From half and hour to 3 or 4. I have been known to write for 7 hours straight when I really want to get something done or I get into something so deeply I can't pull out. Afterwards I'm starving and I ache lol, the next day is usually a bed day!
I write cause I got stories to tell. I hope people like them and try to make them likable, but that can't be my top concern or I'd never write. I have taken a break from new stories for a bit. If I don't have a story to tell at the moment, I don't have a story to tell.
I write stories that A. Aren't so bogged down with complex words you need a dictionary. B. Are enjoyable on the surface level, but have more complexity and depth than the "intellectual elite" can enjoy, so to speak. C. I think will enlighten people who truly absorb the message, and entertain those who don't. D. Its therapeutic and liberating to get these characters out of my head.
Well, this was my experience with them. When I was writing my novella project and publishing instalments on the blog, it was a story about a fallen girl, but underlying it was the idea of exploring philosophy, sociology and psychology. My inspiration was Marquise de Sade, just I wanted to make it less shock-art and more contemporary. In that I ended up with an addictive read, with trashy and literary elements and people loved it. But some of my most devoted fans were "young intellectuals" typically PhD or Masters students. I busted them once when I followed the link on my Statscounter towards a forum page. There I found pages and pages of discussions about my character. They were quoting it, speculating when for a few days nothing was written (they chose to believe it was a true story written in real time) and they kept justifying themselves to each other about liking it so much, calling it their guilty pleasure and "their favourite secret trash novel". It turns out a couple of them were doing PhD's in comparative literature. So then I invited them to come out on the blog and introduce themselves, and we all got a lecture about what "trash" is, in literary terms, ie. not literary fiction but very entertaining and readable popular lit. So in my experience, if you can take the pseudo-intellectual insults, you can revel in the fact they are all reading it, ie. buying it, and that's what you want in the end
Similar experiences. Not all are that way but more then enough for my taste. They live to impress each other but rarely do you meet one that has any talent of his own.
