The best philosophy with writing I think, is just to write what you want, no matter how weird and silly it seems or how others disapprove.
That’s where the real joy of writing is, and what keeps you entertained as an author year after year. Writing what you want and being true to yourself.
Others may see this attitude as not being commercially viable. They argue that to sell your work, you’ve got to study what’s currently selling.
Go out and haunt the bookshops to see what’s trending in your chosen genre, they say, to increase your chances of being successful.
I’ve also heard this philosophy come from the mouth of a successful businessman, and I can understand how it would sound perfectly logical and reasonable from a business point of view.
But writing a novel is a creative exercise; it’s not planning, calculating, and forecasting from an excel spreadsheet. It’s right-brained, creative stuff, not left-brained, logical.
And by the time you’ve faithfully followed the trends and written your novel to please others, the trends may have changed again anyway (just to piss you off).
The truth of the matter is, nothing guarantees success, no matter which camp you’re in and what you do.
But first and foremost, writing should be about enjoyment, right? Otherwise, how can you hope to stick with it? So isn’t it better to write to please yourself?
As you may have heard (or painfully know), writing a novel is a lot of hard work that can take months, if not years, to finish and once that time’s gone, you don’t get it back.
Baring this in mind, I say spend that time wisely. Go with your heart and write what you want. Boldly explore the terrains of your mind and enjoy it; don’t waste time worrying about what other people think.
This novel’s going to keep you company for a while and you should ideally have some fun during the process (and develop some sort of fondness for your characters. They start to feel real after a while!).
If you write (or paint or sculpt or sing, I suppose), someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that’s all.
– STEPHEN KING
Some of the most popular and memorable novels ever have had a pioneering quality to them, where they stood out as being different from the crowd.
Take ‘Wuthering Heights’ as an example. This famous novel, set in the Yorkshire moors and written by the English author Emily Bronte, was published in 1847.
It was controversial and polarising for its day, considered by some to be shocking and vulgar.
It contained stuff like bashings and emotional cruelty, and the character of Catherine, a married woman, blatantly longs for another man (Heathcliff) loving him much more than her husband.
Catherine and Heathcliff are at times vindictive and despicable characters, but their strong connection and deep love for each other knows no bounds.
I love this famous line from the book, coming from Catherine:
Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.
Emily Bronte perhaps didn’t write like an 1800s person was expected to write, but she didn’t care. She just went with her heart and did what she wanted to do, and some critics were horrified.
Graham’s Lady Magazine wrote:
“How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery. It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors.”
Fast forward more than a hundred and seventy years later.
‘Wuthering Heights’ has not only survived, it’s flown.
It’s now considered to be one of the greatest novels of all time, and Emily’s short life (she died aged thirty) wasn’t wasted trying to fit in with other people’s expectations.
She followed her heart, and her legacy lives on.
I read this novel many years ago, and what stood out more than anything was its emotional intensity and high level of passion. What’s curious about this is that Emily’s life, as well as being short, was also mostly isolated and quiet.
She never married and never, as far as we know, appeared to have had any romantic attachments. Yet she wrote about love so brilliantly!
What an extraordinary imagination she had, coming up with stuff like that under those circumstances.
‘Wuthering Heights’ is a compelling story, and one that’s stuck with me, and I think Emily Bronte is a good example of my ‘following your heart and writing what you want’ philosophy.
If you like this post, please share it!