Write the book you want to read

 

Let’s get one thing straight: if you’re writing a book just because you think it’ll sell, you might as well try assembling IKEA furniture with your forehead. Sure, you might end up with something resembling a bookshelf, but you’ll also be covered in emotional splinters and confusion, wondering why you started this in the first place.

Here’s the thing no one tells you loud enough: the best book you’ll ever write is the one you want to read. Not the one you think some imaginary publishing executive in a velvet robe and monocle will buy. Not the one that “feels hot right now.” (Spoiler alert: by the time you finish writing it, that trend will be deader than disco.)

I get it. We all dream of the big stuff—movie deals, Oprah’s Book Club, a surprise call from Reese Witherspoon asking if she can play your protagonist even though the character is a 17-year-old lizard. And yes, success and recognition are sweet. I’m not going to pretend they’re not. But I promise you: there is something way sweeter.

Writing something that feels like you.

That weird little story idea you’ve carried in your heart for years? That genre mashup that makes no sense to anyone but you? That character who speaks in riddles and probably steals forks? That’s where your magic is.

When you write what you love—whether it’s haunted train stations, sarcastic ghosts, or insane space operas—your voice shines through. Your weirdness, your heart, your passion. Readers might not even know why they’re obsessed with your book, but they’ll feel it. That spark. That love. That audacity to write something real.

And listen, even if it never becomes a bestseller or makes it to Target shelves sandwiched between celebrity memoirs and candle-scented cookbooks—you’ll still have something nobody can take from you: a story you believed in enough to finish.

That’s success too. Maybe an even bigger kind.

So please, for the love of all things caffeinated, stop writing what you think people want. Write what you want. Be reckless with your imagination. Be bold with your voice. Be apologetically obsessed with your own ideas. You’re not just a writer—you’re a world-builder, a character therapist, a plot acrobat.

Write your heart out. Even if your heart is yelling, “Give me a pirate romance where all the pirates are cats.”

Because the world doesn’t need more of the same.

It needs you.