My writing might be having an identity crisis.
It’s the result of two separate events on the same day (coincidence? probably not). I read this week’s newsletter from Mark Dawson, and it included the self-publishing advice he would have given five years ago compared to the advice he would give now. The second thing was hitting a pretty serious obstacle in my story-line.
Mark Dawson’s Advice
Mark Dawson’s advice list had three things on it. They were all good, but it was the third item that really hit me. It was to write what you love. Actually, he said five years ago he would have given the advice to write what people want to read (essentially, write to market), but now he says write what you love. This has hit particularly close to home for me, because I’m deep in the drafting trenches on the second BANAnas book, which is a series I started in an effort to “write to market”. I want to have three stories ready to go before I start releasing them. Basically, I’m far away from where I want to be and I can tell it’s going to take awhile longer to get there (maybe even years). And recently I started wondering if I’m going too far away from the kind of writing I love. Not that I don’t enjoy writing about kick-butt Ninja-girls; I do like it. But my favorite thing to write about is space travel and the wonder of it all.
On top of all that, I’m worried that if I continue down the path to publish the BANAnas series, that I’ll be pigeon-holing myself into a certain genre–not that writers can’t jump genres. What I really want to write is Middle-Grade Science-Fiction, the stuff that I loved to read when I was a pre-teen.
Writing Roadblocks
I’ve been making good progress in book two of the series, but yesterday I started writing the Plot Point 2 scene. This is the intro to the climax of the book. And as I finished that scene, I wrote a character interaction that just felt wrong. It’s a natural extension of where I’ve put the characters, but it’s a power/professionalism dynamic that I just don’t like. The problem is that much of the second half of the book (if not the entire book) is based on this relationship existing. So it was discouraging to realize, this late in the game, that I don’t feel like that relationship is working. I could probably step back and take another look at it in the next week or two, but that’s not what I felt in the moment. In the moment I questioned everything about the direction I’m going with my “so-called” author career.
Identity Crisis
If I’m going to write professionally, what do I want to write about? The answer to that is: Middle-Grade Science-Fiction. But the set of decisions that brought me to my present situation made sense when I made them. I had heard that self-publishing was a risk. Not just a risk of whether the endeavor in and of itself will be successful, but a risk for the whole career. If you go the self-publishing route, agents and publishers wouldn’t be willing to take you on (or so I had heard). I don’t know if that’s true or not. I’d also heard that the work that you self-publish is no longer prime property for finding an agent or publisher. That part made sense. If no one wanted to buy it when it was self-published, why would an agent or publisher want to take it on. I love the one MG SF novel that I’ve written (EUROPA ACADEMY), and I don’t want to risk ruining its chances in the market.
So the logical solution that the left side of my brain came up with was to write a new book/series, and to make it something far away from MG SF. Then I would self-publish that series to test the waters, so to speak. I think it was a great idea, up to a point. And the point where I’m starting to doubt my decision is: what do I do once I’ve self-published the “test-the-waters” idea? Do I go all-in with marketing? Do I continue to write in that series to fill it out? How long do I have to wait until I can switch back to my first love (MG SF)?
I don’t know the answers to all of these questions. And I can’t really say what I’m going to do yet. I’ll keep you updated.