“What Kind of Book Do I Want to Read?” An important question for anyone who writes for passion.

For years, I kept asking myself, “What kind of book do THEY want to read?” This question is geared for writing to market, and once this question becomes your focus, it is hard to get away from it. Even when you make a break from writing to market, this question finds its way back into the idea stage of planning a book. Unless you’re the kind of person who can write to market long term, this question will end up crushing your creative spirit. It doesn’t kill it right away. It takes time. But, eventually, it will kill it. I had exhausted every single idea I had in my arsenal by the beginning of last year. I did write a couple of pure passion projects, which is how I believe I managed for as long as I did.

I didn’t make this public, but I did confide to a few close friends that I was planning to quit the writing thing. I’d come to the end of my rope. I ran out of ideas. Worse than that, I ran out of the desire to write. During 2022, I actually told my husband and kids on several occasions that if I never wrote another book for as long as I lived, that would be okay with me. This is why I didn’t start a new series. It’s why I decided to just finish up the remaining Regency series I had started. Then I could walk away from writing all together without leaving any loose ends behind. The plan was to finish all three books in December then release the books through 2023. Then I would retire my blog and walk away from it all. The only thing that stopped me from finishing those books was the move I made. That forced me to stop everything for a few months.

The desire to actually quit writing was something I never thought I’d face. When I was a teenager, I thought I was going to write until the day I died because it was the one thing that I enjoyed no matter what else was going on. But that’s what the simple question, “What kind of book do THEY want to read?” did to me. It killed my passion. For the past few years, I have been struggling to get back to the place of purely writing for passion. I came close a few times. I think An Earl in Time is where I succeeded 100%, but that was meant to be a non-market story. It was a time travel romance with fairytale elements. There’s no real market for it. Knowing that ahead of time eliminated the question completely from my mind. All of the other books were your basic Regencies and historical western romances. The genre I write in is the most popular one there is. On a subconscious level, I knew it, so that stupid question kept pestering me.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been discussing my struggle with eliminating that stupid critical voice. It’s the critical voice that tells you that you need to write to market. The critical voice essentially says that if your book can’t appeal to others, it’s not worth writing. So that’s how you let the question, “What kind of book do THEY want to read?” seeps into you even if you don’t want it.

I’ve been struggling to come up with an idea for a historical western romance that I could get excited about. On my last blog post, I was discussing my works in progress, and then I got to the portion of the blog where I started rambling about a historical western setup that would be fun to write. I kept asking myself, “What kind of book do I want to read?” I’m not going to lie. This was a hard question to answer because my critical voice wanted to replace it with “What kind of book do THEY want to read?” But as I wrote that blog post, I got a spark for a historical western. I haven’t had a spark in that genre for over a year. I ran with that spark and kept writing to figure out where it would get me. Now I have an idea I’m really excited about.

It’s amazing how a simple change in a sentence can open new doors. Every time I start to wonder if I should go in this direction or that, I dry up. So then, I consciously ask myself, “What kind of book do I want to read?” Then the creativity starts to flow again. I don’t expect the path to be easy. If anything, the process of being a writer has its ups and downs, but in some way, I feel like I’ve come full circle. Back in 2009 when I started indie publishing, I never thought about the market. I only thought about what I wanted for my books. The writing came so easily, and it excited me. I couldn’t wait to get on the computer to see where the story would take me next. I am just now starting to get that kind of excitement back. In the past week, I got four new ideas for books (two Regency for a new series I want to start at the end of this year and two historical westerns for a new series I plan to start at the end of summer).

I have tried many things to get back into the writing for passion mindset, and nothing has seemed to work as well as the question, “What kind of book do I want to read?” If you’re struggling in this area, then I recommend at least giving it a try. I realize it might not work for others in the same way it’s worked for me, but since it has been working, I thought I’d share it.

Also, I have decided I’m not making deadlines like I used to. I’m not going to force myself to write when I’m not in the mood. I’m going to make time for family and friends. I’ll just get these books out at a pace that fits. I’ll do pre-orders but only after the final draft is done. At that point, I’ll set a release date and upload the book. Then I have time to work on the blog post and my email list announcing the book is out. I believe I’ll do my best work when I’m not stressing myself out over it.