The Thursday! Newsletter 2-22: Make it for Later
Volume 2, Issue 22
I'm a big fan of writing for an audience.
I'm not a big fan of choosing the audience before I write.
How does that work? I'm glad you asked! Let me tell you.
We creators ought to be in the habit of "shipping" what we make. That is, we create with the full intention of releasing our creations into the world, where other folks can get their grubby hands on them. This intention, though, can lead to a very stubborn creative paralysis, caused when we put the audience before the creation. That is, we start thinking about what will "sell" or how we can make something we know people like and want right now. In the writing world, that's called "writing to an audience" and it leads to all sorts of awful books and stories, variations on things people like right now. We've seen dozens of Harry Potter knockoffs and roughly ten bazillion Hunger Games clones, all written to suit a particular audience.
Of course, you can be successful writing to a specific audience. Movie studios do it all the time. Then again, movie studios can afford to swallow an expensive flop far more easily than you or I can. Occasionally, a novelist will score with a knock-off trilogy that looks an awful like someone else's wildly successful series. Less occasionally, a writer will spin a variation that brings something new and interesting to the table (the original Shannara series comes to mind as one of the many attempts to write something like Tolkien's massive epic). Thing is, when you start chasing what is popular today, you have to work very fast because tastes change quickly. What people love today, they will probably not love tomorrow. If you're writing your own version of the Twilight stories, you've probably missed that bus and if you haven't gotten your Fifty Shades story out there, you might as well not bother. The audience has moved on. Let's go ahead and rule out movie studio success or hitting the one lucky home run that sets us for life. Maybe they'll happen, but can you really plan for it? I don't think you'll be very happy if you try.
Now, everything I've said to this point isn't the same as writing within a particular, and we shouldn't confuse that with filing the serial numbers off a hit book or movie and shoving it to market. There is plenty of room in a genre for stories that follow its conventions but also tell a cool, engaging story or introduce us to an interesting character. There is a difference between writing a cozy mystery and simply copying Agatha Christie. If you want an excellent example of someone who fills the cozy genre perfectly without actually copying Christie, check out Ruth Ware's stories. Stephen Donaldson told a perfect standard fantasy story with his Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, but made his protagonist so utterly repugnant that the books turned the genre entirely on its ear. Ware and Donaldson certainly didn't chase a particular audience with their work. They wrote the story they wanted to write, inside the particular genre box they chose, and set it free.
What's my point here? In short, I'm writing in praise of patience. When you create something out of your heart and with your own hands, you aren't obliged to have an audience already in mind for it. In fact, it's probably best if you don't (unless your target is very specific -- a commission or a submission guideline, for instance). You definitely don't have to turn it loose right away, either. You're allowed to wait until the right crowd for what you've made presents itself. That's what I've been doing. The past few days, I've written two or three poems that I've not yet released. I don't know when I'll release them. Could be tomorrow or a week from now or even longer. They're still cooped up on my hard drive because I don't have the right people in mind for them yet. See, everything I put on my website (or elsewhere -- and you just stay tuned for other ways to get my poems and stories, muahaha) goes out with at least one other person in mind. Sometimes, I release a story thinking a whole bunch of people will like it but sometimes I only publish for a few folks. Sometimes, I only publish for one (and I'll tell you a secret here: the one is never me). The thing is, I always have an audience in mind when I release one of my little creations. That person (or persons) might be actual, factual people with names and everything but oftentimes they are people who likes a certain thing or have certain dreams or are at a certain place in their lives. Because the things I write have a purpose, no matter how small, they're always meant for someone and when I know who that someone is I release them. Until I do, though, they need to stay close.
Who knows? That person might just be you and wouldn't you want to know I had loosed a wonderful little thing into the world that was just the right thing for you, here and now?
Now, I can't say my way of doing things is the best way or a way approved by any professional writer or publisher. Most likely, I am full of hooey. I'm used to that. I've been full of hooey most of my life -- at least as long as I could spell the word.
But.
Doesn't the world feel a little better, brighter, more warm knowing that someone out there is making something for you right now? He might not know your name. She might not envision you only as a shadowy outline in her mind but she knows you'll like what she's doing when she's done. Doesn't it make you smile, just a little, to know that in my notebook right now is an unpublished poem that will suit you just fine when you finally see it?
I like that, to be perfectly honest with you. I want the world to have more of that delightful potential. Heck, we already know the world is full of crass marketers and wicked grifters who have you in mind. They want your money and your mood and your soul and they don't care what the getting of any of that will do to you. You care, though, don't you? You care about whether your story or poem or illustration or painting or sculpture will hold pride of place in someone's life for a day or month or decade or forever, don't you? You want to make the world a little less crap and a little more smooth, don't you?
Heck yes, you do.
I do want to see your best creative work. But I don't want you to waste that by chasing phantom popularity or by simply throwing it into the abyss. I want you to send it, on purpose, intentionally. I want it to get to the ones who crave it, who need it even though they have no idea right now what it is. And if that means you hold on to it for a little while, well, that's just fine.
When it arrives where it should, when it should, it'll get that much more love.
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What I Wrote this Week
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One Last Thing
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