"You Should Write" ...

Every writer hears it, and I suspect every writer with a blog probably writes about it - yet it makes it no less frustrating, that the situation is a bit of a cliche'.

I've certainly had the conversation more than once - but it was the iteration a week or two ago which seems to be sticking with me and prompting me to write.

"You should write something lighthearted."

The purveyor of this particular advice is someone who's known me long - but understands me little; and who, frankly, doesn't try to.  It is what it is - and it isn't the point of this post.  Not entirely.

"You should write something lighthearted."

What this means, coming from this source, is, "You don't really know what you're doing; please allow me to 'help' you by pointing you in the direction of something that might actually sell.  Also something I would prefer to read, and to tell people about, as I know the author."

I did give the explanation that, having completed one novel, and having been selling it for a year and a half now, it really isn't a "just like that" proposition - to go shifting gears and genres, and (ya know) to WRITE AN ENTIRE NEW NOVEL to suit her advice.  I did not explain about the seven years I have been educating myself about the industry, about the fact that it *takes* this long to shill a book ... about the minor little detail, that an author must write out of inspiration, not out of (wrongheaded) ideas of the market.

*Sigh*

I'm close enough with this advisor that there persists a sense of duty, on her part, that there will come a time it will be an inevitability she'll "have to" read my book.  This cannot be an appealing prospect.  This is exactly why I have spent all the time since I started the writing telling friends, family, coworkers, even casual acquaintances who are so generous as to ask about the progress:  there is no obligation to read my book.  I wouldn't make my family read it; in most likelihood, I wouldn't *let* my nieces read it (before a certain level of manturity - and interest - anyway); I wish my friends didn't all say "Oh, I can't wait to read it" when I know it may not be to their real taste.

I know my audience(s).  The market for The Ax and the Vase is not a parallel match for the population of my everyday life.  Even some of those people who have been most encouraging - and, unbeknownst to them, helpful to my work - aren't folks I would think would care for the subject.  "George Clooney" - an executive at the last mainstream financial firm I worked for (who, amusingly, called *me* "Angelina Jolie"; and who asked me every single time I saw him "how that novel is going") gave immeasurable practical support; and I would be amazed, just these few years later, if he even remembered that I exist on this planet.


All this is to say ... that I have less concern to fight the extraneous "you should write" dynamic, than to alleviate the sense of obligation those who know me develop, regarding the novel - which leads them to wish they could be obligated to something more palatable than my brand of historical fiction.  Publishers don't froth over an author's intimate fanbase.  They want general readership.  And Ax can provide that.  I just happen to be one of those weirdos who do not, apparently, hang out exclusively with my audience.

My plans on that have more to do with a marketing circuit.  Cultivating all my University connections, to come talk at various schools and read and/or sign, when the time comes.  Hitting up my business owner friends, offering nights with the author.  Massaging corporate communications types up and down my resume', and bookstore upon bookstore upon every bookstore that will have me.  Friendly enough.

But not to the point ... of giving me "you should write" advice ...

Heh.