Essay : The Kind of Writer You Want to Be

I've turned 33 years old yesterday. It feels both fortunate and unaccomplished. My life situation is enviable: I have a loving girlfriend who "gets" me, a dog, a rather fulfilling job and piece of real estate to my name in an up-and-coming city. The only tangible problem in my life right now is that I've only wrote two short stories this year and it took me everything I had to pry them out.

I only have myself to blame for this low artistic output: I am poorly managing my stress, my devouring fear of failure and, first and foremost, I've showed no respect whatsoever for my own personal goals. My failure wasn't complete though, as I've learned a thing or two during my 32nd lap around the track about what kind of writer I am and what kind of writer you can possibly be in today's marketplace.

If you could only choose one: would you prefer having the capacity of writing standout fiction or be a bestselling author?

The answer to this question has become clear for me in 2015, but is it for you? I'm not saying it's impossible to do both, but the principle of bestselling literature have nothing to do with the quality of your fiction. Basically, a bestselling novel answers to a demand from the audience. Whether it happens organically or the novel is created for that purpose, A bestseller is a novel written about what people want to read about. It is written for the largest audience available, not necessarily for the audience you want.

How many serious readers have bitched about the quality of Dan Brown or E.L James' writing? Yet, they sold millions of novels because they answered to a particular demand: intellectual, yet accessible mysteries and fiction that sublimes middle-aged sexuality. The people who bought their books and made them famous weren't looking for great fiction, they wanted something in their lives that they didn't have and that the books provided. If you want to be a bestselling writer, this is how you need to think: your fiction needs to add immediate and tangible value to your audience.

Of course, there are exception to that rule. Not every bestselling author has mediocre writing. James Ellroy, for example, is fucking great, but he had his big breakthrough by writing a novel on one of America's greatest unsolved mystery and has maintained his status by writing about post-war America. Dennis Lehane is another extremely talented writer who had to drop the private detective novels in order to reach a wider audience. He also lucked out when Clint Eastwood took interest in one of his books and turned it into an award-winning movie.

James Ellroy got creative for his big literary breakthrough, but goddamn. Isn't he a magnificent bastard or what?

Step outside yourself for a second and ask yourself the following question: why are there people who are still reading fiction today? A novel is a one-on-one relationship. It's an uninterrupted, highly evocative exercise where much is left to the reader's interpretation. Readers mold a part of the story they read in their own minds. It gives them an intimacy with the narrative that no other medium comes even close to replicating. People read because it makes them feel unique. They're having a temporary relationship to an author that will never, ever be replicated, not even during a second reading. It's a consumable bliss.

So, it's important to make your readers feel special, but it's important to understand who you want to talk to, also. In 2015, I've made peace with the idea that I'd ever be a bestselling author, at least from my living. I don't even want to be. I want the freedom to write whatever the muse is whispering to my ear. To make my stories as good and as satisfying to me as I can possibly make them. I don't want to wake up one day and feel like I have to write what my audience is expecting and not what I feel I should be writing. I have the freedom to do that right now because I'm not depending on my fiction to live and that was the big lesson of 2015 in writing for me.

I don't want to be James Ellroy or Dennis Lehane, I want to be Joe Lansdale, an author with complete creative freedom over his output. Lansdale might not be the richest author in genre fiction, but he is the most free. That kind of freedom means working with small presses a lot, because they are more concerned by the quality of creative output than they are with massive sales. It's the difference between small presses and mainstream publishers, guys. Small presses are run by creative people and mainstream publishers are run by salesmen. It's quality of product vs sales. It's why small presses will always be small and great and mainstream publishers will always sell a shit-ton of (mostly mediocre) books.

There is no right or wrong answer to this career direction quandary. The important is that you know where you want to go and not going back and forth between the two paths. I will probably never make a living off my writing, but I don't care. I stopped caring about that. I have a cool living right now and writing is a pleasure to me, and I should always keep it a pleasure, as least in the creative cycle part. I chose not to sacrifice that. There's nothing wrong either about wanting to make a living out of your craft, some of my favorite writers did that, but you have to make it your goal and write accordingly.

Tell me, what kind of writer do YOU want to be?