Criminal Minds

 

Terry here, with our question of the week: 

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? 

I write from the heart and the head; follow my muse and my whims; think about the reader and about my own enjoyment. And I pretty much never think about how to make a book commercial. For me that would be the kiss of death. I freeze just thinking about what “the market” means. I know there are people who can do it and do it well. They have a hunch what might be “hot” next. They spy a new book that went viral, hit all the bestseller lists because it was a new slant on things…and they think hard about how to capitalize on that fledgling trend. And sometimes they are able to do that. 

I don’t begrudge them at all! I have two writer friends who have segued to fantasy and romantic fantasy. They started more than a year ago getting in on the ground floor of that new trend and they are now hot in the middle of it. I admire the heck out of that. Don’t know how they picked up on the trend before it was a trend, but they did. Even more admirable is that they were able to write a totally different type of book than they had written before. Wow! 

For me, the most “innovative” writing I’ve done was starting my Jessie Madison series. And it wasn’t because I thought the market was calling me. It was because as much as I love writing the Samuel Craddock series, I wanted to try something new. And I’ve loved doing it. The research is fun, the characters and setting completely different, and the action non-stop. BUT the readers of my Craddock series have largely rebelled. They turn their noses up. They like the thoughtfulness of the Craddock books. They like the social justice issues I write about. They like the voice and the setting. 

I have no intention of stopping that series, but I am indulging myself in branching out. And I have attracted new readers—readers who like the action-oriented thriller series. When I first started writing Samuel Craddock, I had one goal—find an agent, then find a publisher. That’s it. Market? Didn't even know what that was.

It’s a good thing that’s not what I was aiming for. Here’s a little awful story to tell you why. I was at a conference and attended a panel of editors about what they were looking for. I asked a question about my freshly written first Craddock book. Set in Texas. Small town police procedural. One of the panelists, a very successful editor, proceeded to unload on me--informing me that books set in Texas would never sell, that I was wasting my time, etc. That I should have studied the market and written something people wanted to read. All in a sneering tone. The stranger sitting next to me grabbed my hand and squeezed. She knew how devastating the diatribe was. 

A Killing at Cotton Hill won the Macavity Award and was on the Baker and Taylor best seller list. Which tells me that even professional editors in the business don’t really have a handle on what’s going to sell (and by the way, how I wanted to neener-neener that guy. And ten years later, with the series still going strong, I still wish I could.) 

 So I don’t care what editors say they want. What they really want is a well-written book. There are no new subjects, just new slants on it. New uses of language. New characters. New character responses. Changes in the world, in the nation, in the states, in the cities that an author makes use of. New voices. 

 My advice to a newbie is write YOUR book. Don’t imitate. Don’t try to write what’s hot right now. By the time you finish the book and find an agent/publisher, chances are the heat will have cooled. Write what you love to read. Write what excites you and interests you.