Well, I'm finally feeling well enough to return to work, even though it means hauling my little blonde butt out of bed at 5:15 AM. The cats are, to put it bluntly, not amused. Lilly really has issues with the fact that my taking sick time doesn't mean I'm planning on staying home with her forever and always, amen. This is because Lilly is a freak.

I'm better than I was, although not one hundred percent; I was correct in assuming that my failure to develop a proper fever meant that I wasn't dealing with strep, and instead had 'just' a sort throat. There's very little 'just' about losing the capacity to swallow, but I'll take what I can get when it keeps me off the magic antibiotic happy juice. That stuff just knocks me out of the game for as long as it's in my system. NO LOGIC ALLOWED.

I've put my unexpected time away from work to good use, doing a lot of editing, a lot of inking, and a lot of catching up on my stock-piled television. I've now seen the entire first season of ReGenesis, aka 'Canadian television is trying to buy my love, and I think it just might be for sale.' Look, any show that's willing to give me smallbox-Marburg chimera diseases (I love chimera diseases) and have the balls to go for the Spanish flu? That show is basically going to own me for as long as it likes. Sadly, ReGenesis only wants to own me for four seasons. Alas, Babylon.

So now that I'm emerging from my viral hibernation, what have I missed? Assume that the world was just trundling on without me for the past three days.

Welcome to number sixteen in my ongoing series of essays on the art and craft of writing. I'm planning for fifty essays in this series, all of them based on my fifty thoughts on writing. Not all the essays will be of use to everyone. Some of them may not be of use to anyone but me (and since they're my thoughts, I definitely find them useful). Some will be more practical than others. Some will be more theoretical than others. None will be filled with tasty candy, although I really wish they would be.

Here's our thought for the day:

Thoughts on Writing #16: Be Realistic About the Market.

Yes, this is another of the more publishing-oriented essays in the series, and provides the opposite side to essay #15's 'love your work and write what you love' coin. If you're looking for more specific writing tips, you may want to check back later. We will be discussing writing today, obviously, but we're mostly going to be looking at the parts of the business that relate to market trends, taking advice from agents or editors, and making hard decisions about the future of your work. Here's today's expanded topic of discussion:

Understand that what you want to write may not be something that the market can currently support. There will be books no one wants to buy because they can't figure out what genre they fit into. There will be books you can't sell to anyone, period. And then there will be the books where your editor says 'look, we can only take this if you're willing to make the evil scientist a werewolf.' The decision is ultimately yours -- I can't tell you what to do -- but you're going to need to embrace the fact, right out of the gate, that your best-behaved, most beautiful baby may be the one that no one wants to invite to their birthday party.

Yes: after talking about 'write what you love,' today we're going to talk about 'write what will sell.' They're not quite the polar opposites that they seem to be on the surface. After all, you might argue, one of them's the cute but bookish girl who organizes the school literary magazine, writes romantic poetry, and never goes out without a notebook, while the other is the high school beauty queen punk-rock cheerleader movie star who has all the boys wrapped around her little finger. There's no way that they have anything in common, is there?

On the contrary. Much like Hannah Montana and her secret pop star routine, the two have more in common than you'd think. Bearing that firmly in mind, let's begin.

( My thoughts are not your thoughts; my process is not your process; my ideas are not your ideas; my method is not your method. All these things are totally right for me, and may be just as totally wrong for you. So please don't stress if the things I'm saying don't apply to you -- I promise, there is no One True Way. This way for my thoughts on writing to the market, and making the hard decisions about how to handle your work.Collapse )