Ink Blots: Thoughts on Writing from the Tentacle Pen

Chapter One - Staying True to Yourself

I see so many on Wattpad stressing about getting more reads and votes. Is popularity really what is important? I beg to differ.

I won't lie, I would love to have thousands of reads and hundreds of votes on my stories. What I want even more though is to produce stories that I'm proud of. That comes first and I hope that authenticity leads to building a base of readers.

In business there is a concept called the niche market. Products that take advantage of niche markets don't sell as much as products with wider appeal but they often have much more passionate customers. Movies are a perfect example, and I'll even use two movies from the same director to make my point. How many people have see the Avengers? Just about everyone, it was a huge blockbuster action movie with wide appeal. How many people saw Joss Whedon's online musical Dr Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog? Much fewer but they are incredibly passionate fans, many can not only sing all the songs but recite most of the lines as well. Both are quite good, but a musical comedy about a wannabe super-villain just doesn't grab as many people as a group of famous superheroes saving the world from invading aliens.

If what you love to write fits into a niche: embrace it. Writing something you are less passionate about because it will be more popular is probably the best way I can imagine to get burnt out as a writer. My day job is as an artist and for a while I was doing freelance logo design for extra money because it pays well. It also came close to making me hate doing illustration work because there was very little about it I found satisfying beyond the paycheck. Life never lets us do only what we enjoy doing, so when you do find something you truly enjoy you need to hold on to it and not compromise it for temporary gain.

Of course this doesn't mean being popular is bad, or that writing stuff that has wide appeal is somehow wrong. It's not, as long as the reason you wrote it is because it's what you wanted to write not because it's what others wanted you to write. You love your idea for a teen romance full of high school drama and a bad boy love interest? Write it. You love your epic fantasy full of elves and wizards? Write it. You have an idea for a scifi story about corporate espionage between interstellar merchant ships featuring a suave blue-skinned alien and his cybernetic ferret? Write it (and then send me the link).

There's another risk to being true to yourself as a writer that everyone has to face at some point. Offending some readers. Not everyone shares the same values and for anything you write there's likely to be at least one person who finds it offensive.

Personally I find stories where stalking behavior is portrayed as romantic instead of frightening offensive. Romances where the main character falls in love with her kidnapper, or worse her rapist, offend me even more. That means I'm  not the target audience for these stories (later I may take on why I have such problems with these storylines and why you might be better off avoiding them).

That said, I write stories that some people will find just as offensive because of my set of values and life experiences. I include LGBTQ characters because there are many people I'm close to and care about who fall under that umbrella. I also live in, and set my stories in, a state where same-sex marriage is legal. My main character and her boyfriend live together without benefit of marriage, engage in decidedly kinky pursuits (mostly off camera), and it's implied they aren't strictly monogamous. These are all things that are guaranteed to offend some people, especially those from certain religious backgrounds, but they are also all things that come from my life experience. Isn't the cliched writing advice always "write what you know'? This is what I know, and live, every day. I just wrap it all up in a package of modern fantasy with vampires and mages.

In the end I'm not going to worry about everyone liking my writing, and I don't think you should either. I have to be true to myself and my writing. This doesn't mean refusing to accept critique or getting angry at those who leave negative comments. That is not how you improve as a writer (or at anything). I welcome constructive criticism, there is always something to learn from it. In fact, the value of constructive criticism and how to learn from it will be the subject of my next chapter and if you have any for this chapter: leave it in the comments!