I see you saying "I need to know what I am writing for" but all I can hear is "I don't know how to write for myself".
It's like you've gotten so good at molding yourself around other people's expectations and achieving when you write what other people want to see that you've lost sight of the stories that you want to tell yourself, the ones that you'd be proud of even if not a single other person in the universe ever saw them. Of course, learning and tweaking and improving your processes to become a better writer in a technical sense is all good for you, but maybe thinking about marketing and the author/reader relationship is a little cart before the horse - if you aren't excited to tell yourself these stories, how can you make anyone else enthusiastic about your work?
If you were going to look back on yourself 10 years from now, talking about your work as an author, what do you want people to know you for? What are the stories (edited or unedited, experimental or tightly structured, novels or 100 word short stories, whatever) that you want to put on your website apropos of nothing?
Think about the stuff you want to share not because you got it into some famous literary magazine or sold a bajillion copies of it, but because you loved that story so much you brought it into existence for the sheer sake that you could. Where are those? People who resonate with the things that make you happy to create will find you, I promise. :)
I will never forget reading about how the early railroads across america supplied rifles to the passengers. This so that they could shoot buffalo from the train as "free entertainment". Worst of all, they left their rotting carcasses on the prairie...all part of an overall strategy of eliminating an important foundation of the native american way of life...It both horrified and saddened me that we could behave like this. How someone can use this as a successful example is beyond me.
I love your essays about your journey and process, so much echoes how I feel so keep it up! :)
I love all of this so much but particularly calling out how Capitalism and Capitalist mindset often involves lauding the most abhorrent behaviour humans are capable of rather than wondering about that and if it's a system we should want to participate in.
I think a lot about my audience and how it's always queer, neurodivergent weirdos and misfits. Like, always. I think about the stuff that resonates with me and want more of it in the world. I know there are so many of us out there with our janky misaligned messy multiplicities who find formulaic fiction derivative of the status quo over and over. And I think about how the authors I like best, I don't have a parasocial relationship with but I do know stuff about them outside of the things they've written. Like how Louise Erdrich runs a bookstore (and is a character in one of her own books, which, I absolutely loved and feels like a version of 'write a newsletter from the perspective of a character') or that Ruth Ozeki also teaches Dharma and can be found at the Upaya campus where I did my Chaplaincy training.
I think you are getting at something really essential here, which is that humans crave community and connection and as a reader, we find that through authors. I don't know very much at all about Becky Chambers but YOU BET when I meet a fellow reader of her books, we will gush excitedly and bond for the next twenty, thirty, forty minutes about her worldbuilding and characters.
anyway...good food for thought, all this. And like, can marketing be art? Or more so...what does it look like to not market ourselves, but to build community through the art we make?
Elnora, I remember a young and ambitious writer sending short stories out to magazines and webzines hoping to get published. I also remember hearing about rejection letters with comments about the need to basically dumb your writing if you want to be a commercial success. You vowed to never do that. Take all worlds, journeys, and characters that are residing in your head and put them into the stories that you want to tell. Your audience will come.
I see you saying "I need to know what I am writing for" but all I can hear is "I don't know how to write for myself".
It's like you've gotten so good at molding yourself around other people's expectations and achieving when you write what other people want to see that you've lost sight of the stories that you want to tell yourself, the ones that you'd be proud of even if not a single other person in the universe ever saw them. Of course, learning and tweaking and improving your processes to become a better writer in a technical sense is all good for you, but maybe thinking about marketing and the author/reader relationship is a little cart before the horse - if you aren't excited to tell yourself these stories, how can you make anyone else enthusiastic about your work?
If you were going to look back on yourself 10 years from now, talking about your work as an author, what do you want people to know you for? What are the stories (edited or unedited, experimental or tightly structured, novels or 100 word short stories, whatever) that you want to put on your website apropos of nothing?
Think about the stuff you want to share not because you got it into some famous literary magazine or sold a bajillion copies of it, but because you loved that story so much you brought it into existence for the sheer sake that you could. Where are those? People who resonate with the things that make you happy to create will find you, I promise. :)
I will never forget reading about how the early railroads across america supplied rifles to the passengers. This so that they could shoot buffalo from the train as "free entertainment". Worst of all, they left their rotting carcasses on the prairie...all part of an overall strategy of eliminating an important foundation of the native american way of life...It both horrified and saddened me that we could behave like this. How someone can use this as a successful example is beyond me.
I love your essays about your journey and process, so much echoes how I feel so keep it up! :)
I love all of this so much but particularly calling out how Capitalism and Capitalist mindset often involves lauding the most abhorrent behaviour humans are capable of rather than wondering about that and if it's a system we should want to participate in.
I think a lot about my audience and how it's always queer, neurodivergent weirdos and misfits. Like, always. I think about the stuff that resonates with me and want more of it in the world. I know there are so many of us out there with our janky misaligned messy multiplicities who find formulaic fiction derivative of the status quo over and over. And I think about how the authors I like best, I don't have a parasocial relationship with but I do know stuff about them outside of the things they've written. Like how Louise Erdrich runs a bookstore (and is a character in one of her own books, which, I absolutely loved and feels like a version of 'write a newsletter from the perspective of a character') or that Ruth Ozeki also teaches Dharma and can be found at the Upaya campus where I did my Chaplaincy training.
I think you are getting at something really essential here, which is that humans crave community and connection and as a reader, we find that through authors. I don't know very much at all about Becky Chambers but YOU BET when I meet a fellow reader of her books, we will gush excitedly and bond for the next twenty, thirty, forty minutes about her worldbuilding and characters.
anyway...good food for thought, all this. And like, can marketing be art? Or more so...what does it look like to not market ourselves, but to build community through the art we make?
Elnora, I remember a young and ambitious writer sending short stories out to magazines and webzines hoping to get published. I also remember hearing about rejection letters with comments about the need to basically dumb your writing if you want to be a commercial success. You vowed to never do that. Take all worlds, journeys, and characters that are residing in your head and put them into the stories that you want to tell. Your audience will come.
Pawcunawah
Just wanted to say that it’s great to have you back! 🤗