(no subject)

[intothewood]

Thanks for all of your replies to my questions about reading within your genre and word counts. Seems like most of you keep track of counts on a professional level, to help you gage progress, story type and whether something should be reexamined for content - all good reasons.

I don't take a very professional approach with my own material, and I suppose that's a bit out of rebellion and a bit out of denial. I've written professionally for years under deadlines and word counts and slogging through content that I'd rather poke out my eyes than deal with, so I tend to go to the other extreme and ignore rules with my own stuff. That's something I'm trying to resolve.

More questions:
Do you write to meet the standards of the market, or do you just go with your heart and hope someone gives your work a chance?

How do you think the book industry fares in terms of accepting original material, and are changes to the market and how consumers are choosing their titles affecting that? Is it better or worse than the music and film industries, or on par?

Comments

[niniane]

I write what I want to write. I accepted long ago that, baring some tremendous streak of luck, I'll never make enough writing to make it worth anything. (i.e. if I'm super lucky, I'll earn approximately what I would have at a minimum wage job) As such, I do it for myself. Markets be damned.

That said, if I write something that feels appropriate for a market only with a few tweaks, I tweak it. I see nothing inherently wrong with say, padding a story out a bit, or cutting a bit, or whatever to make word count. Or changing the theme to meet an anthology, or whatever. TBH, I've now written two stories specifically for anthologies just to see if I could. (Hah, we'll see if either is accepted.) I see nothing wrong with writing to a market - it's actually a fun challenge. So would I write something I thought was garbage for a market? Would I write about a theme that bored me? Hell no. But I'm totally willing to fiddle with an idea I've been given by someone else.

I honestly think that book publishers are probably more open than most others, because it's cheaper to publish a book than, say, make a movie or even record an album. This gives a certain degree of freedom in betting on unusual ideas/new authors/whatever. That said, I haven't tried to sell a screen play or a CD, so who knows?

[intothewood]

I write what I want to write. I accepted long ago that, baring some tremendous streak of luck, I'll never make enough writing to make it worth anything. (i.e. if I'm super lucky, I'll earn approximately what I would have at a minimum wage job) As such, I do it for myself. Markets be damned.

My thoughts exactly!