You Do You, Part I

And Let the Market Do What It Will Do

Welcome to short, sweet Shelf Life number two out of three. I usually write two of these each week but this week I have to write three, so I’m trying to make them shorter so it comes out to the same number of words and I can logic myself out of feeling like I have extra writing to do. Extra writing is just unconscionably horrible. Sometimes even doing the normal amount is torture. Anyway, that’s how today’s Shelf Life turned into a two-parter. Another day you might have gotten a size-XL screed but today (and Tuesday) you’re getting two size XM (extra-medium) instead.

Today and Tuesday we’re talking about “writing to market” and what that means, and when to do it, and when not to do it. As usual, there are differing schools of thought with wide gulfs of gray area in between. On the far ends of the spectrum are “Yes, write to market or try to, why would you waste time writing something that won’t sell?” and “No, write what’s in your heart and to heck with marketability.”

When I say “writing to market,” I’m talking about a broad range of things. Some ways of writing to market are sound, great ideas. Some ways of writing to market will almost always be a mistake—or, at least, they will not yield the result you hoped for.

As I wrote in one of my early and favorite Shelf Life articles, Beauty and Marketability, everyone wants to write a successful book and everyone wants to write a beautiful literary masterpiece. Ideally, I think all of us would like our book to be both: Critically and commercially successful. Very few books in the grand scheme of things are both, though. A great many books are artistically meritorious but commercially unsuccessful, or commercially successful but artistically unworthy. And then there’s a vast sea of books that are both terrible and unsuccessful, but there’s no need to discuss those here. No one writes that book if they can help it; no one sets out to write a book that is both poorly written and unsuccessful.

What does it mean to set out to write a success? I don’t mean to start setting down the story that is in your heart and mind, envisioning it as the success you hope it will be. I mean when you design your story from the ground up to be a success. When you analyze market trends, study the bestsellers, and sit yourself down to write what you anticipate will become a lucrative three-movie deal. There’s nothing wrong with considering the story you already know you want to tell in light of its salability to an agent, publisher, or literary magazine once it is done—in fact, I encourage it. But at the far end of this road, if you go all the way down to the end, is attempting to manufacture a bestseller instead of telling the story you have to tell. I don’t think this often serves the author well.

Writing is an art form. Writing is also a job and a profession. Publishing is a business. You can approach writing and publishing from anywhere along that spectrum, from creating a great work of art and launching it into the world, to manufacturing a product intended to succeed in the market. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with either approach, there is a lot of desirable writing real estate in between.

Herewith, I’ve got two “Do”s and a “Don’t” to help you consider whether and how to “write to market” the next time you’re settling into your writing chair to start something new and wonderful. Next Tuesday, I’ll bring you two more “Don’t”s and another “Do” to round out the list.

Do: Monitor Your Manuscript Length

I’ll start with this unpopular old chestnut: When writing prose—fiction or nonfiction—word count matters a lot. If you’re not in range for whatever it is you’re writing, you’re going to have an uphill battle to get your manuscript published.

Just about every literary magazine has guidance on word count in their submission guidelines: How many words should your story contain to be considered by that market for publication? It doesn’t matter how good your story is—how revolutionary, how well-written, how groundbreaking, how well-told—if the market considers submissions between 500 and 5000 words and your story is 7500 words long, it’s not going to sell to that market. Literary magazines actually do us short story writers a great service by letting us know this up front.

Agents and publishers are usually less transparent about what they’ll consider and what they’ll actually rep or sign. This means novel writers and longform nonfiction writers need to do their homework before querying or submitting. Even though an agent probably does not post a word count range they are willing to consider for a novel, there’s definitely a range they’re willing to consider. Everyone has a limit somewhere. If you pitch a 400,000-word middle-grade adventure fantasy I don’t think any agent in the world will rep that. That’s an order of magnitude longer than most middle-grade fantasy adventures.

When your word count is out of range for the type of story you’re telling, this sends up all kinds of red flags: This writer isn’t familiar with the market, nor with the type of book they’ve written. They may not have read widely in the genre they’re writing, which can be an indicator of poor ability to write that genre. If they’re considerably longer than the normal range for this type of book, that may indicate they’ve included a lot of unnecessary stuff. Why does this author need more words than any of their peers to tell the same type of story?

Whatever it is you’re writing, it’s a good idea to have a sense of the marketable length for that type of story. This will help you set boundaries for the manuscript and alert you along the way if you’re overcomplicating the story. 

Don’t: Be a Copycat

Something I see often within the #WritingCommunity on the #TerribleBirdApp is discourse on what’s hot right now, what the market wants, what agents are looking for, and how to write that. This ranges from users discussing how they would like to see more #ownvoices and more diversity of characters and stories in their reading list and users crying that they’ll never be able to sell a manuscript if they don’t cater to what the fickle market wants right now.

But when it comes to trad publishing, you have to figure in the lag time. Let’s say a book comes out tomorrow (or next Tuesday, as Tuesday is the big day for new media to launch) and becomes a breakout smash, a runaway bestseller. Let’s see. It’s about a magical competition of some kind and . . .  checking my notes . . . retells a classic fairytale. Like some kind of Cinderella retelling but instead of being the fairest girl at the ball to win the prince’s heart, Cinderella has to be the most talented sorceress. 

You might say to yourself, “hmm, a classic story retold with modern fantasy elements? I can do that.” So you sit down to start writing. Let’s say the plot comes to you fully fleshed out and you can start drafting today and set down 1000 words—1000 good words—a day, every day, till it’s done. Two months later you have a manuscript. The Cinderella magic competition story is still capturing market share. You’re good to go.

But your manuscript is a long way from publication. By the time you revise, seek early reader feedback, revise again, edit, secure an agent, and go on submission to publishers, the Cinderella magic competition story is old news. And with a traditional publisher, your book doesn’t get signed and come out next week. There’s a year or more of lead time ahead for editing, production, and marketing. 

But while you were spending 60 days writing the next big Cinderella magic competition story, an agent was signing the next one. By the time yours is ready, fairytale retellings are over and robot uprisings are the new thing. My advice? Take inspiration from books that become bestsellers, especially the unexpected ones—but put that inspiration to use honing your own ideas. Don’t try to derive the next big thing from today’s big thing.

Do: Read #MSWL and Open Calls for Submission

There’s nothing like a writing prompt to turn on the faucet. Turning on the faucet is a metaphor for writing that I have borrowed from my friend Jamie at RE:Written. She says sometimes when you turn the faucet on you have to let the gross dirty water run for a few minutes before clean, clear water starts coming out. If you’ve never had that experience, it’s similar to how you have to let the shower run for a few minutes to get that chilly water out of the pipes till it runs hot. I love a good writing prompt to get myself started so I can run out that dirty or chilly water and then I save what I’ve written to develop into a real project later and turn to whatever it was I intended to work on with the clean, hot words.

Some of the things I’ve written to prompt to turn the faucet on have gone on to become submissions I’ve received great feedback on. There’s nothing wrong with writing to a prompt that inspires you to get creative. 

Where are some places to find writing prompts? Well, if you’re looking to write something marketable you could do worse than looking through open submission calls for literary magazines and the #MSWL hashtag on Twitter to see what agents and publishers are looking to sign. Does this mean that if you write it, they have to buy it? No, of course not—but it means you have a lead on someone who might be interested.

Don’t take open submission calls and #MSWL posts as instructions, take them as inspiration. Have a thread of an idea but it’s not coalescing into a plot? Browse the #MSWL tag and see what kinds of things people are looking out for and evaluate whether anything would fit together with your story. Review calls for submission and see if anything fits with what you’re writing and whether you can guide your story toward a good fit. 

For instance, I just checked the #MSWL hashtag and found this tweet from literary agent Nina Leon describing a setting and elements that would fit well with several of my works in progress. Or consider that Diabolical Plots is opening to submissions in July for a themed issue on telepathy—I can take the concept of telepathy as a writing prompt or see where it might fit into a concept I already have laying around and give it that “something extra.”

Alright, those are your three tips for today. Make sure to tune in next Tuesday, while I drive back from Tennessee, to get the other half of this sage advice.

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