Writing for Who?
I have often heard the saying, write the type of book that you would want to read. Which sounds nice in theory, but it does sort of beg the question: just because I want to read this kind of novel would anyone else?
A while back a blogger commented on one of my posts discussing how he prefers to write for him. He occasionally posts things, but ultimately he has to enjoy them. If others like it great, if they don’t, well that’s life isn’t it? In this case one could definitely write the type of novel they’d want to read, no matter what type of novel that is.
Considering Your Audience.
I’m not going to lie. I don’t entirely necessarily have my audience fully in mind when I write this. I write what comes to mind and try and figure out who the audience would be when I’m trying to publish it. I’ve read from various sources that this isn’t the best way to go, in fact a lot of publishers and even other writers feel that you should keep your audience in mind while your writing.
Write for you.
If there is one lesson I think I can take away from the Casual Vacancy is that J.K.Rowling wrote a book that she really wanted to write and that she really enjoyed. She knew that not everyone would love it, but it made her happy and ultimately that was all that mattered. I think we as writers forget that. We try and figure out what people want to read (which is how you end up with 10,000 vampire novels) rather than something that we would prefer to write. I’m not saying you wouldn’t necessarily enjoy writing a vampire novel, but if you’ve put a novel you’d rather work on, on the back burner just so you could try and ride the wave that Twilight created for you, you’re obviously not going to enjoy it as much as you otherwise would.
Ultimately I think you the writer has to love the book the most. If you don’t love it, all the fans in the world isn’t going to make that worth it. You have to write for you and know that more than likely there’s a market for you somewhere. It may not be a particularly large market, but it does exist.
