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How to decide what to write

May 2, 2016 by rachael

G’day, all.

How do you decide what to write? Good question, correct? Interestingly there is really no decent answer to this. Write what you love has been an answer to this question for many years, but does it really answer it?

My idea of that is – maybe. Some of us love to read erotic works. However, if you cringe while even thinking about writing this type of stuff, then it will not be a good fit in the main. Your discomfort will come through loud and clear. I happen to fit into the very uncomfortable side of things, but I will tolerate graphic descriptions if it advances the story. That is the ONLY reason. Graphic sex for nothing but trying to put the value of the book up is not my type of pleasure at all. Guess that is the reason I am amongst maybe 100 people who have not read 50 Shades of Grey. 🙂

Anyone can write something if they put their mind to it. It all depends on how they feel about it. Stephen King wrote stuff that sounded like Raymond Chandler at times when he first started out. Then he developed his own unique style. Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer both surprisingly wrote romances interspersed with their mystery murders and Regency novels. Of course, they used pen names, or Agatha Christie did. Her romance name was Mary Westmacott.

What interests you? As a kid, I loved the usual fare of Enid Blyton and horse books. ( I wish the Police of Whatever had not stuck their noses into things that were not insulting to whomever and had these banned.) But I also snuck off with my Uncle’s collections of Adam and others which had stories in them certainly not suitable for little girls. The female displays of those days were very uninteresting to a little girl of 10. But I devoured the stories in these magazines and consequently gave myself nightmares.

So I had a varied reading history. I was also known for reading the ingredients on the back of the Cornflakes packets, long before this became required reading for those watching their waistlines. But that was when my secret stashes became low.

These days, Harry Potter is still all the rage. Until some clown takes exception to something in it. Why do people install thoughts into children’s minds which were never there in the first place? The idea of reading  I thought, was to let your imagination free. Which is why fiction appeals so much. These days our imagination is crippled by do-gooders who which to dictate what we do from waking until we go to sleep, what we eat, drink and recreate with. Never mind murder your darlings. Murder your imagination and thinking for yourselves instead.

These days our imagination is crippled by do-gooders who which to dictate what we do from waking until we go to sleep, what we eat, drink and recreate with. Never mind murder your darlings. Murder your imagination and thinking for yourselves instead. And this is good for us?

Stephen King makes a very good point when he describes his characters too. He supplies a base for you to imagine from and lets you run with it. Rarely does he give great blobs of information about the person, yet you can clearly see them in your mind’s eye. See this when you watch a movie made about one of his books. Jack Nicholson is about the only character who seems wholly taken from a book of King’s. The Shining is not a pleasant movie. Nor was the book. But neither were meant to be.

So what has all this to do with how you are going to make up your mind what you are going to write? It isn’t going to give you a direction. If you took as that, I am sorry. All I wanted to show you is you don’t have to choose one genre above another to start with. Often you will find that the genre chooses you after a while. Romance is highly desired as a wide genre. But like a good jigsaw, there are many components to make a whole. Straight romance, erotic, lesbian, gay, young adult, the romance section is very wide. If romance appeals to you, fiddle and experiment.

If you are really determined to make a mark, then you should be using all the gadgets you can use without going overboard to find something you want to write. These may include Google analytics or the numerous programs that can point out a niche that is low competition, high desire. But don’t just go out and blindly write a book before at least doing some research. Use all the available tools that you can afford or those that are free(some of these are worth more than those you pay for) to get every edge you can.

But never lose sight of the desire you had in the first place. You can please some of the crowd, no matter how small. If you want to write a book on the mating habits of gnats, go ahead. You will certainly not become rich, but you will meet someone’s reading desire somewhere. But if you want to make some money put some work into researching and finding a niche that resonates with more than one other.

The days of simply pleasing yourself and hoping to appeal to everyone are dead. Select a small demographic of people, further select something that appeals to this selection, whether it be fairy tales for children, financial studies for retirees or young romance for teenagers and see where you go from there. By small, I do not mean 10 or even 100. Picture these people in your mind. Roald Dahl wrote for children, but publicly said he disliked them a great deal.

You can do the same if you can keep this from showing. 🙂

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: act, how to decide, new genres, thoughts

So what to do this year?

January 5, 2016 by rachael

G’day.

I hope everyone had a safe and Happy Christmas and New Year. New year, new(?) goals. I’ve pretty much given up on one of mine – to lose the 10 pounds that has snuck on since I had a stroke. Oh, all right – more like 15. But it is almost impossible to shift I am finding,  since all my joints seemed to have decided to fuse since that time and the ones that do work do not work the same way. Stephen King talked about his way of walking changing since his accident – I can relate well.

But this is not about me. I am mobile now and I can work around all the problems – eventually. All this does is pander to my innate laziness. I LOVE having reasons not to do something that I know I should.

How about you?

One of the things I am intending to do this year is to find who my readers are. I know I cannot appeal to everyone. That has been a long time finding. But now to find the ones who do enjoy my writing. So how do I plan to do that? At this point in time I have no idea. But I do have some ideas on what I should do.

One of these is to decide who. I do not write steamy sexy books for example. My first(and only!) attempt at that made me laugh my head off – not exactly the plan for it. That book went into the darkest drawer I could find and is not going to ever see daylight again if I can help it.

I like writing for children and I like cosy mysteries, with a little bit of violence thrown in. After all, I know some little old ladies who are perfectly capable of putting someone in hospital with a whack or a walking stick. Kids can be a bit more tricky, but wizards and other-world things still seem to attract them in general.

Or perhaps it is just what is needed or appeals at the time. To both groups.

Have any of you finally found your readers? Great if you have. That is a terrific starting point. After all, you can direct your writing efforts towards them without worrying if they will like them. But never get complacent about it. Readers are precious and will leave you in droves if they think you are not giving your best every time, even the more forgiving ones. Unfortunately I have found this with some writers I love – the aforementioned Stephen King being one.  I lost interest in him for a long time when he started writing what seemed absolute cr*p to me. No doubt others loved it, but I just didn’t like the change. That didn’t mean to say I didn’t buy each of these weird books, if only to see whether he had come to his senses again!

One of my mentors has always told me to write what I like to read. Now, while I think that is  very good advice, if you don’t really think you can write that stuff, don’t be afraid to try something else. Like my experiment with erotic writing ( I don’t like reading that stuff by the way, but all the best to those who do!) it is worth at least trying something out of your comfort zone  out, just to push yourself.

There are so many categories on Amazon and other platforms now, you should be able to find something that appeals. So go search for one, and have fun trying to write what genre it is. Just don’t spend too much time if you think it is not a good fit for you.

Keep trying. It works!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: experiment, have fun, new genres, trying