7.3%

Really, I must work harder. I only edited/rewrote about 9 pages. Lame.
So tomorrow, I’ll be aiming for a greater page count.
FYI – I read Write What You Love, Sell… Nothing. It really echoed my fear for the longest time…

I’m just waiting. Or gathering my courage. Or something.

I wonder if it has something to do with my first name (from one Lynn to another )

So expect to see those alpha military heroes from my little neck of the woods.

My point is, I guess, is that while I’m fascinated by medieval Britain, it’s been tread over in romance/fantasy so much that I didn’t feel the challenge. And researching this particular period in history has really 1) made my creative juices flow and 2) made me loooove the story I’m writing.

And I think loving the story you write is far more important than loving a potential market. There’s emotion in the former; not so much in the latter. But that’s just me.

But what I know now that I didn’t know then, is that what makes the difference in what sells and what doesn’t is voice. If your Delta guy or your ballerina girl each have a distinct voice, if the story is told in a way no other has told it before, it looks different. It’s interesting. It’s marketable.

Maybe.

It only makes sense that if there are oodles of a certain type of hero and heroine, the market won’t stand tons more. But it might stand ONE more – and it all depends on the voice of the writer. If you’ve ever judged a contest, you can see what I mean. Why is it that some stories, although well written and perfectly good stories, just don’t punch your buttons? In my opinion, it’s because the voice doesn’t ring out, doesn’t make the story stand above others.

I have to step up and be honest here – when I started the CPA book, I didn’t think it stood a snowball’s chance of selling. Not sexy enough. But I was in my 11th year of writing, and I was like you – so sick of following the trends, trying to find a chair before the music stopped. And it always stopped before I could sit down. I decided to heck with the market, and so what if CPAs aren’t sexy? MINE will be. I wrote it without looking back, or second guessing, or worrying about whether it would sell. Maybe that was the difference – I honestly didn’t really care. I was burned out. But I still wanted to write.

The book landed me two agent offers, and sold within a few months.

Hey, I don’t have all the answers, but I do believe, after my experience, and hearing others, it always comes back to voice. Yeah, some careers or story lines are harder to sell, but if the editor sees something there she doesn’t see anywhere else – namely YOU – and it strikes a chord, well, there you are – sliding into a chair when the music stops.

Stef

And if everyone followed the trends, who would set them?

You have to write what you love otherwise the book is blah–there won’t be the passion necessary to draw in your first readers (agent/editor).

The market changes so fast that if you wrote to the market by the time you got the book out there, something else will be “hot”. I tried to write a chick lit and failed miserably. That’s not my voice — even though that’s where the “trend” was.

Focus on agents who say they want “commercial fiction.” They are the ones who don’t even know what the rules are, so you won’t hear, “You can’t have an athlete” as your hero.

Good luck.