Do you write from the heart, following your muse, not thinking about the reader at all; or do you write with the market in mind, thinking of the reader and how you can make the novel commercially successful; or somewhere in between? How would you advise an emerging author on this?
Dear Future Reader,
I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Sure, we haven’t technically met, but I know a few things about you. You probably gravitate to the kinds of stories I like to tell. So, we might read some of the same books, watch some of the same movies, spend our time thinking about some of the same things. Or maybe you’re a bit of a surprise, the type of person I wasn’t expecting. Like all great love stories.
Some may say I’m in love with the idea of you. I love thinking that someday someone might care about the words I’m laboring over, about the story that keeps me up at night. Someone might just notice the construction of a sentence I spent the last few minutes dissecting. Just the thought of their eyes—your eyes, maybe—resting for an extra second on a syntactical or grammatical choice I’ve agonized over is enough to keep me working. One more sentence, one more paragraph, one more chapter. Just for you, my love.
Maybe I’m coming on too strong. Some might say I shouldn’t even think about you in the early stages of writing. I should follow my muse, they say, and listen to my heart, paying no mind to the person I hope will pluck my book off the (independent bookseller’s) shelf one day. But I’ve never been good at playing it cool.
To be honest, I don’t know what I’d do without you. I certainly wouldn’t be sitting hunched over this laptop screen, wondering what comes next in the lives of made-up people in a dreamt-up world. I wouldn’t be talking to myself as I pace the floor of the guest bedroom, index cards at my feet and visions of plot twists dancing in my head. You are my co-conspirator. You are so much more than a customer or a consumer. You are the reason I do what I do.
A story isn’t finished until someone reads it, hears it, experiences it in some way. I learned through years in the theatre that the audience is always the final collaborator, that nothing is complete until they’re brought into the room. I may dance like no one’s watching, but when it comes to writing, I know somebody is. And that makes all the difference.
This writing stuff is hard. Almost not worth it. The exhilaration of the good days barely makes up for the agony of the bad ones. But you know what keeps me going? You know what motivates me when the abyss of the blank page threatens to swallow me whole? You know what helps me feel a little less alone when I’m stuck inside on a Saturday night with nothing but my own outline to keep me company? You do. The thought of you. The prospect of creating something that might just mean something to you.
The fact is, you are my muse. You are the reason I do what I do. I could be cool and aloof and claim that I don’t think about you, that the mere suggestion that I owe you anything is a form of selling out. But I don’t know how to operate that way.
I promise not to pander, not to chase trends or lose sight of what made you want to read me in the first place. Your attention is a gift, and I intend to pay you back in kind. I promise to keep writing, to keep trying to surprise you, to keep finding new things to share. For all my complaints, I love what I do. And I don’t think I can (or should) do it alone.
So, future reader, I’ll get back to work. I’ll come up with something you haven’t seen. I won’t take you for granted or make too many guesses about who you might be. I’ll just try and believe you’re still there. And I’ll meet you on the page.
Your friend,
Matthew