Love What You Write, Write What You Love

I fondly remember the million and one thoughts going through my head when I sat down to write my first book. I was really into Smallville, the TV series about the teenage life of Superman, and I wanted my story to have a romantic triangle like the one I’d seen there, one in which the heroine was entangled with Mr. Incredibly Wrong and borderline psycho. She’d be on the run from her crazy life, headed in the direction of North Conway, the mountainous country town I’d visited every summer with my family since I was 7. The hero she’d encounter would be exactly like the sort of man I’d dreamed of meeting myself – handsome, suave, quick-witted with a snappy sense of humor, a tendency to play both the wise guy and the daredevil, and of course, a pure heart. I’d even throw in a bit of inspiration drawn from my current life at work, taking a day job that was giving me gray hair and making it part of a suspenseful, romantic saga. Needless to say, I really loved what I was creating!

More recently, I was outlining the third story in a new series I’m plotting. I’d flown through the outlines for the first two books and though I had only a vague idea of what I wanted to happen in the 3rd story, that’s typically all I need to get my juices flowing. I fumbled my way through the first few chapters. Then, I hit chapter 6 and I completely froze. Writer’s block isn’t generally an affliction I suffer from, but I was completely stumped as to how to move forward with this particular story. I sat on it for weeks and when an idea for a different story in a different series struck my fancy, I hesitated only briefly before giving myself permission to jump ship. The new story I was dying to write was exciting the heck out of me. The one I was putting on the back-burner, not so much.

I recently read an article which offers an interesting method authors can use to create a more unique premise for their stories in the hope of attracting agents, editors, and ultimately, readers. The article recommends something called the rule of six, idea being that when choosing your premise, and other aspects of your story, the first thoughts that come to mind are those which we’re all most familiar with and have been done to death. To find a unique premise, character goals, traits, plot points, etc., we need to dig deeper, as it generally takes an average of six times to get that which has been programmed into our brains off the table, and come to a place where we can draw upon the unique ideas of our imaginations. I think the suggestion is excellent. Problem is, there isn’t any mention of this unique idea we’re being urged to write about being something that we love.

This is hardly the first article I’ve read that puts an emphasis on sales and/or impressing the “powers that be” over and above writing a story that we ourselves love. I’m not saying that the authors of such articles don’t believe that loving your story is important, or that they don’t assume this goes without saying. What nags at me, however, is that when we focus too hard on what’s going to sell (something no author, agent or editor can ever be 100% certain of) our own enjoyment can get pushed aside and we run the risk of writing something we don’t love and possibly don’t even like. Boredom will likely come thereafter, something we writers often mistake for “writer’s block.”

Authors I know personally and have the utmost respect for have confided in me that they abandoned manuscripts they loved, and have kept them under their mattresses for the last several decades because someone told them their work “wouldn’t sell.” How my heart goes out to these authors! It’s one thing to have your work “rejected” because it’s in need of an editing job and not entirely ready for publication. But to abandon an idea you love because it isn’t in vogue, or you or someone else in the business suspects it “may not sell?” Enthralling ideas don’t come around every day and if I love something enough to want to spend hour upon hour developing it, that means a lot. At the very least, I owe that brilliant idea the time it takes to make it everything it can be.

I’m back to working on the third story in the series I’d abandoned. Focusing on what I like about the book, I was able to make a few minor tweaks that have both improved the story and increased my level of interest in it tenfold. This doesn’t always work but if you can find yourself loving a story, however you got there, that’s a story worth writing, in my book!

Readers can tell when we don’t love our stories. They won’t be the same and honestly, fellow writers, why write something you don’t totally love? Whereas, not being able to put down the story you’re writing is the most wonderful feeling a writer can experience, and it’s something you definitely don’t want to miss out on!