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msagaraThis is, in some ways, a continuation of the last post, because these are the types of things I think about when I should be writing.
Before I started writing for publication -- as opposed to writing the things that I would never try to get published -- I equated good with sales. This is in part because I didn't pay attention to bestseller lists or in-store placement when I was choosing a book; I chose a book I wanted to read. Anything else seemed irrelevant. I had no idea what numbers which novels had garnered, nor did I care. If I loved it, it must be selling.
When I started writing for publication, I knew, as all writers know (yes this is irony) that if I wrote a book that was good enough, people would love it, and their love would translate into popularity and sales.
I wrote a book that was deemed good enough to be published. But its sales weren't great; it did get some good reviews, but also some mixed ones. And I accepted the bad parts because I knew that I hadn't quite managed to translate what I wanted to say clearly enough. I was trying, still, to figure out things like structure, pacing, narrative flow. I did the best that I could do at the time, I really did - but I knew that I hadn't quite managed it. I wasn't there yet. I had done some things right; I had done some things wrong.
So I had to figure out what I'd done wrong, and make sure I didn't make the same mistakes in future novels.
When I wrote Hunter's Death, I'd finally begun to subsume so much of what I knew intellectually into an organic process; I think that book was better in many ways than the books that had come before it. People liked it. I knew it wasn't perfect, but I felt like I'd finally gotten close. So close.
Broken Crown was the book that taught me the most about the intersection of reading, writing, and the blinders I had been wearing, without any awareness of them, to that point.
Broken Crown was the first book I ever finished that I was certain was almost exactly what I'd envisioned. Yes, of course there were revisions, and all the usual additions to make things clearer (and really, having to add 250 pages should have been a clue). But...this was the book that said and did what I meant it to say and do.
You can probably see where this is going.
I was utterly baffled by the response to it. It was, I knew, the best thing I had ever written; it was the pinnacle of my craft to that point. But... somehow, it failed to allow readers to connect with it. The Jody Lee cover was fabulous, and I think people picked it up for that, and still pick it up because of that cover. But somehow hundreds of thousands of people didn't love it, even though I'd finally, I thought, succeeded.
So the negative reviews for this book were the first bad reviews that actually hurt. I was totally confused by them (this reaction makes me laugh, now). And it wasn't until I read a review (I think in Starlog) in which the reviewer said readers would either love the book for its cultural density, complex characterization, multiple viewpoints -- or they would hate it for exactly the same reason-- that the lightbulb finally went on.
Yes I had finally written what was, in my mind, the book I wanted to write, and no, the success of the writing goal did not guarantee that everyone else would love it. A lot of people did love it, because they read for some of the same reasons I do. But a lot of also people found it impenetrable. Or, you know, boring.
Because I had always, on some level, assumed that people didn't love love love my books because I hadn't quite gotten good enough, arriving at a point where I thought I had and finding the view from that pinnacle quite different than I expected changed the goal that had pulled me through the writing of seven novels (well, eight really, because I had finished Uncrowned King by the time Broken Crown was published). I was not going to have the sales of David Eddings overnight. This book that I loved and that I had been so happy with was not going to make me Robert Jordan.
I think this is a natural progression for many, many writers. The lightbulb goes on. People read for different reasons, and what they love to read is often not what everyone else loves to read. I think that as readers we already know this -- but while the impulse to write and create comes naturally out of what reading meant to us, we often don't apply what we feel for books in general to what we feel for our own stories. Does this make any sense?
Well, no.
And it makes the writing much harder, in some ways, because there is suddenly no clear metric, no clear way. Your love for your own story is almost -- but not quite -- irrelevant (I'll return to this). Even if you do not fail your story in any way, it's still irrelevant because you are not the only person who will read it. The success or failure is in part in the hands and hearts of the people who will try to read what you've written, no more and no less.
You can do everything right with regards to the actual writing. You can lay out the perfect structure, you can make it as real as you possibly can, you can write perfect metaphors, perfect words -- in the end, it doesn't matter if what you've written doesn't speak to your audience.
I was lucky in some ways; enough of what I did love was liked by people who could make publishing decisions; enough of what I did love was liked by people who buy books. But... I was never going to reach Robert Jordan numbers because of what I'd chosen to write.
So what did that leave me? With the decision, in its entirety, of what I chose to write.
But the thing about writing is this: You need to love what you write. (Listening to writers who are pulling all their hair out and cursing their work does not perhaps drive this point home to people who don't write, but trust me, it's true.) You need to love it enough that it has heart, because without heart, no matter how fabulous it is, it's cold and mechanical, and people won't connect with it even if they can't articulate why.
And there are some stories that I, at this point in my life, can't love. I just can't. I can take a good, hard look at the market and I can see what's selling -- but I can't find a story of my own to love in all of that that would give me access to those readers.
So I try to figure out what, in my stories, doesn't work, and what does. I give up on ever gaining the love or approval of certain readers. I understand that some of my writing choices will lose people.
But I understood that on some level before I started. I understood that writing fantasy novels -- in series no less -- had already cut me off from a vast swathe of readers. It cut me off from a vast number of very vocal writers whose work I admire as well, because, well: Fantasy Series.
We all have our delusions. Mine was: When I finally do everything right, I will sell tons. Others have the: When I am published, people will of course love this book and recognize me. The delusions we entertain produce unfortunate outbursts when we're finally forced to face the truth.
Some people flail in public, because they're still trying to figure out why. And while people who are more objective (i.e. not them) could tell them, they're not really absorbing the words; there are some lessons we kind of have to work our way around to on our own, with the hope that once we finally get it we won't have offended everyone along the way. Before this happens, we get things like the author who is unhappy with agents. Or editors. Or who feels that publishing is somehow a vast conspiracy and for Insiders Only. Choose your delusion.
It is not just people who can't get published who do this; people who are published -- and who discover the hard truth about being published firsthand -- do it as well (often by dismissing things that they don't like that do sell, like romance or spy novels or fantasy series), frequently going so far as to say readers are just stupid or readers just want garbage.
Well, no.
Name of the Wind was a fabulous book. The writing was fabulous, on a word for word level; it was lovely, it was spare in the right places, lyrical in the right places; the characters, even the small ones, felt real. And that book sold because something in the story reached readers. It was in no way garbage. It was in no way phoned in or dashed off or ... any of the things that are often said about books that sell.
So I know that I can write something that intricate, that real, and still reach people. Or rather, I know that it can be done.
Still trying.
Before I started writing for publication -- as opposed to writing the things that I would never try to get published -- I equated good with sales. This is in part because I didn't pay attention to bestseller lists or in-store placement when I was choosing a book; I chose a book I wanted to read. Anything else seemed irrelevant. I had no idea what numbers which novels had garnered, nor did I care. If I loved it, it must be selling.
When I started writing for publication, I knew, as all writers know (yes this is irony) that if I wrote a book that was good enough, people would love it, and their love would translate into popularity and sales.
I wrote a book that was deemed good enough to be published. But its sales weren't great; it did get some good reviews, but also some mixed ones. And I accepted the bad parts because I knew that I hadn't quite managed to translate what I wanted to say clearly enough. I was trying, still, to figure out things like structure, pacing, narrative flow. I did the best that I could do at the time, I really did - but I knew that I hadn't quite managed it. I wasn't there yet. I had done some things right; I had done some things wrong.
So I had to figure out what I'd done wrong, and make sure I didn't make the same mistakes in future novels.
When I wrote Hunter's Death, I'd finally begun to subsume so much of what I knew intellectually into an organic process; I think that book was better in many ways than the books that had come before it. People liked it. I knew it wasn't perfect, but I felt like I'd finally gotten close. So close.
Broken Crown was the book that taught me the most about the intersection of reading, writing, and the blinders I had been wearing, without any awareness of them, to that point.
Broken Crown was the first book I ever finished that I was certain was almost exactly what I'd envisioned. Yes, of course there were revisions, and all the usual additions to make things clearer (and really, having to add 250 pages should have been a clue). But...this was the book that said and did what I meant it to say and do.
You can probably see where this is going.
I was utterly baffled by the response to it. It was, I knew, the best thing I had ever written; it was the pinnacle of my craft to that point. But... somehow, it failed to allow readers to connect with it. The Jody Lee cover was fabulous, and I think people picked it up for that, and still pick it up because of that cover. But somehow hundreds of thousands of people didn't love it, even though I'd finally, I thought, succeeded.
So the negative reviews for this book were the first bad reviews that actually hurt. I was totally confused by them (this reaction makes me laugh, now). And it wasn't until I read a review (I think in Starlog) in which the reviewer said readers would either love the book for its cultural density, complex characterization, multiple viewpoints -- or they would hate it for exactly the same reason-- that the lightbulb finally went on.
Yes I had finally written what was, in my mind, the book I wanted to write, and no, the success of the writing goal did not guarantee that everyone else would love it. A lot of people did love it, because they read for some of the same reasons I do. But a lot of also people found it impenetrable. Or, you know, boring.
Because I had always, on some level, assumed that people didn't love love love my books because I hadn't quite gotten good enough, arriving at a point where I thought I had and finding the view from that pinnacle quite different than I expected changed the goal that had pulled me through the writing of seven novels (well, eight really, because I had finished Uncrowned King by the time Broken Crown was published). I was not going to have the sales of David Eddings overnight. This book that I loved and that I had been so happy with was not going to make me Robert Jordan.
I think this is a natural progression for many, many writers. The lightbulb goes on. People read for different reasons, and what they love to read is often not what everyone else loves to read. I think that as readers we already know this -- but while the impulse to write and create comes naturally out of what reading meant to us, we often don't apply what we feel for books in general to what we feel for our own stories. Does this make any sense?
Well, no.
And it makes the writing much harder, in some ways, because there is suddenly no clear metric, no clear way. Your love for your own story is almost -- but not quite -- irrelevant (I'll return to this). Even if you do not fail your story in any way, it's still irrelevant because you are not the only person who will read it. The success or failure is in part in the hands and hearts of the people who will try to read what you've written, no more and no less.
You can do everything right with regards to the actual writing. You can lay out the perfect structure, you can make it as real as you possibly can, you can write perfect metaphors, perfect words -- in the end, it doesn't matter if what you've written doesn't speak to your audience.
I was lucky in some ways; enough of what I did love was liked by people who could make publishing decisions; enough of what I did love was liked by people who buy books. But... I was never going to reach Robert Jordan numbers because of what I'd chosen to write.
So what did that leave me? With the decision, in its entirety, of what I chose to write.
But the thing about writing is this: You need to love what you write. (Listening to writers who are pulling all their hair out and cursing their work does not perhaps drive this point home to people who don't write, but trust me, it's true.) You need to love it enough that it has heart, because without heart, no matter how fabulous it is, it's cold and mechanical, and people won't connect with it even if they can't articulate why.
And there are some stories that I, at this point in my life, can't love. I just can't. I can take a good, hard look at the market and I can see what's selling -- but I can't find a story of my own to love in all of that that would give me access to those readers.
So I try to figure out what, in my stories, doesn't work, and what does. I give up on ever gaining the love or approval of certain readers. I understand that some of my writing choices will lose people.
But I understood that on some level before I started. I understood that writing fantasy novels -- in series no less -- had already cut me off from a vast swathe of readers. It cut me off from a vast number of very vocal writers whose work I admire as well, because, well: Fantasy Series.
We all have our delusions. Mine was: When I finally do everything right, I will sell tons. Others have the: When I am published, people will of course love this book and recognize me. The delusions we entertain produce unfortunate outbursts when we're finally forced to face the truth.
Some people flail in public, because they're still trying to figure out why. And while people who are more objective (i.e. not them) could tell them, they're not really absorbing the words; there are some lessons we kind of have to work our way around to on our own, with the hope that once we finally get it we won't have offended everyone along the way. Before this happens, we get things like the author who is unhappy with agents. Or editors. Or who feels that publishing is somehow a vast conspiracy and for Insiders Only. Choose your delusion.
It is not just people who can't get published who do this; people who are published -- and who discover the hard truth about being published firsthand -- do it as well (often by dismissing things that they don't like that do sell, like romance or spy novels or fantasy series), frequently going so far as to say readers are just stupid or readers just want garbage.
Well, no.
Name of the Wind was a fabulous book. The writing was fabulous, on a word for word level; it was lovely, it was spare in the right places, lyrical in the right places; the characters, even the small ones, felt real. And that book sold because something in the story reached readers. It was in no way garbage. It was in no way phoned in or dashed off or ... any of the things that are often said about books that sell.
So I know that I can write something that intricate, that real, and still reach people. Or rather, I know that it can be done.
Still trying.
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-21 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-22 03:36 am (UTC)This is why the reader part of me just assumed that they were bestsellers. How could they not be when they were so great?
I've since come to understand that this is not the case -- but that part still breaks my heart sometimes.