My Wall.

[MapHatter]

We've all come up against The Wall, I'm sure, and for each of us no doubt it's different. For me, it's getting past feeling the need to consider what sells, or what's hot, or what the audience expects/needs from a book. I wrote an 800 page novel some time ago. It's currently in the 3rd draft. I hate it. It's awful. It's amateur, but it was a story I wanted to tell, and I've told it.

Now, for some unknown bloody reason, I just can NOT get back into that mindset. Everything I've ever read says you should write the story you want to read. Even David Eddings said something like 'I looked everywhere, and could not find the stories I wanted to read, so I wrote them.) But try as I might, I just can't get there. I'm constantly fixated on finding a good, strong, unique idea that would sell, or that would attract audiences (published or self-published), and this is not constructive for me.

My question is this; do any of you good people have this problem, or have any advice that might allow me to re-train my thoughts on the matter? If any of you are psychologists trained in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, that would be extra useful....

 

[Mythopoet]

Perhaps the problem is that you are thinking about "writing the story you want to tell, the story that you would want to read" and "writing what will appeal to readers and attract an audience" as two opposing ideas. They're not. They're ideas that need to be in balance with each other, but every writer looking to publish and grow an audience for their work needs both aspects.

The problem is that traditional publishing has taught a mindset that always aims to reach the largest possible audience with every single work. Instead of seeing "readers" as a diverse group with wide and varied interests, this mindset reduces "readers" to the lowest common denominator and dumbs down everything it publishes to appeal to them. This ends up leading to generalized trends, formulaic structures, predictable plots, cardboard characters... and creative death. But that's the wrong way to try to appeal to an audience.

What a writer should do is this:

1. Identify the kind of story/stories you want to tell.
2. Identify the specific group of readers that would naturally be drawn to those kinds of stories.
3. Determine how best to tell your story to satisfy both your artistic vision and the audience, thus turning them into fans.
4. ????
5. Profit

 

[MineOwnKing]

Could be as simple as not realizing that you're actually just bored.

If you're under the age of 40 or if you don't have kids, then you're brain can play tricks on you.

A surefire way to self-determine if you are bored, is to monitor your sleeping patterns and your sexual appetite.

If you're dragging ass yet also super horny, then it's time to refocus that wasted time into your project.

It's one thing to be busy all the time, everybody is busy with life, if you want to get back into a groove then that groove must overwhelm your thoughts and channel your passion into artistic release.

Get your life in order, eat the right foods, don't stay up late, be intimate with someone, and then sit your butt down and tune out the world.

Try writing 500 words of just dialogue and see were it takes you, watch an inspirational movie, listen to music, drink red bull.

 

[Russ]

We've all come up against The Wall, I'm sure, and for each of us no doubt it's different. For me, it's getting past feeling the need to consider what sells, or what's hot, or what the audience expects/needs from a book. I wrote an 800 page novel some time ago. It's currently in the 3rd draft. I hate it. It's awful. It's amateur, but it was a story I wanted to tell, and I've told it.

Now, for some unknown bloody reason, I just can NOT get back into that mindset. Everything I've ever read says you should write the story you want to read. Even David Eddings said something like 'I looked everywhere, and could not find the stories I wanted to read, so I wrote them.) But try as I might, I just can't get there. I'm constantly fixated on finding a good, strong, unique idea that would sell, or that would attract audiences (published or self-published), and this is not constructive for me.

My question is this; do any of you good people have this problem, or have any advice that might allow me to re-train my thoughts on the matter? If any of you are psychologists trained in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, that would be extra useful....

Sorry you are in such a tough spot.

First off, congrats on actually writing a 800 page novel. That is a massive accomplishment, more than the vast majority of aspiring writers ever do, certainly more than I have! You have climbed a pretty good mountain in doing that, it might not be Everest, but it is at least Mt. Kenya.

While I am not a shrink, I spend a lot of time with them (both as friends and in business) and the talk often turns to writing. Anyways, CBT is not what you need. But there are other techniques you might find as good kickstarters that have a solid grounding in cognitive science. Here are just a couple to try out:

1) Try to get your conscious mind out of the way of your creative voice. Some people use drink or drugs to do this, but I don't recommend that, rather writing when you are "half awake" is a well proven technique. That means you might want to try writing immediately after you wake up and before you do anything else, or immediately before you go to sleep when you are quite tired.

2) Working to deadlines with consequences really works for many people. Set yourself a deadline for words or outlines, or synopsis that are hard to meet. Deadlines that will challenge you. For instance you might set a deadline of drafting four outlines in a month so that you can choose which one you want to follow through with. If you don't make the deadline you will have to wear the shirt of your most hated football team out in public, or not eat ice cream for a month or whatever works for you.

Aside from cognitive science I am a pretty old school guy. Thus I always suggest; put ass in chair, write, repeat. You will build skill, mental toughness and work habits. It often doesn't even matter what your write.

Lastly I might suggest that trying to figure out what the market wants is almost impossible to do. With the lag time in writing and publishing, but the time your "Game of Thrones" style work is done, that will be out of style. Trying to time the publishing market is about as hard as timing the stock market, only worse. Don't do it. Write something of quality you think people will like, and if your timing ends up being off, put it aside and then write something else. A friend of mine wrote a book that had no market when it was done, put it aside, and wrote some other stuff such that he was making a pretty good living at writing. Then a trend changed, his agent knew about the other work and sold it, and it became his breakout novel that has put him consistantly on the NYT list.

So stop fixating on the market. Can't be done consistently enough to make it worth while, but good writing can be.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

To get me inspired I look to things that I like: politics, golf, cooking, law, Harry Potter, etc. and conduct either challenges or thought experiments. My first book I ever wrote started with a challenge by me to me to write a book. I wrote it. My second novel was a thought experiment about a Harry Potter society and how it would work out if certain real political factors were present. The novel I'm drafting was a challenge to completely pants my way through a novel. A novel I am building was a challenge to create a magic system based on American common law principles of torts, property, and contracts.

Because it seems to me that readers like what's good. It could be the dumbest or most cliched ideas in the world (See e.g. the origin story of Jim Butcher's Codex Alera; see also Eragon (noting its popularity despite its cliched content), but readers will read it and like it if it is good. I'm one of those. I only want good books. They need to fun, thought provoking, and most of all well written. I don't care about originality because ideas are cheap. And, tbh, from what I've found no one really knows what will sell. Oh they can have rough estimates and make good educated guesses but sometimes things pop off like gangbusters that no one was expecting. See Harry Potter.

Besides, it seems...cynical to write towards an as of yet mythical audience for the sole purpose of money and readers can pick up on that.

 

[MapHatter]

Some exceptionally insightful and constructive replies guys, thank you ever so much. I'm not quite sure I was expecting anything to be quite so concise. Lots of stuff that I think I already knew, really, but it always helps to hear other people say it.