Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Write what you like



Some people write along trend lines.  Some people write geared towards a specific agent, publishing company, or audience.

Then there are those of us that sit alone in our basement and write about aliens.

Sure science fiction is starting to make a jump back into YA fiction.  People love Beth Revis’ ACROSS THE UNIVERSE and Dystopian societies with their vast array of technology are all the rage, but no one is sitting with a hot new alien story.  (Okay except for I AM NUMBER FOUR, but that’s a whole other story…)

Some agents have even said that they like science fiction and not aliens and a lot of other people have looked at me like I’m crazy when I say, “My manuscript is about alien prophecies and love.”  But you know what?

I don’t care.

Yeah, you heard me.  So not every agent wants to read a story about aliens and not every publisher wants to publish a science fiction story for young adults, but you know what?  Even if it takes me 1000 agents to query, 1000 publishers before one will even consider this manuscript…I’m still going to try.

Why?

Because I love it.  Pure and simple I love this manuscript more than anything else I’ve ever written.  I stay up late world building and thinking of new alien technology when I should be sleeping.  These characters and this story has been in my head for so long that I swear I could recite it word for word, and really need someone other than me and my critique partners to read it so I stop looking so crazy.

I’m coming up on that crazy/strange long stretch of time where I can see the end.  This is my last content draft and the next one is to double check my grammar and punctuation (hopefully…unless there are some things I really need to fix) and then it’s DONE…yeah you heard me this thing is going to be DONE and started QUERYING by this spring.   It’s very scary, but I love this story too much to keep it buried on my hard drive.

Do write with the trends?  Why do you write?  Do you care that your book may not be favored by the masses?  WHY DOES NO ONE FIND ALIENS SCARY AND ATTRACTIVE LIKE I DO?
(You can't tell me he isn't pretty...alien actor or not)

9 comments:

  1. I love aliens. In fact, I have a little alien story brewing in my head. It's been there a while but I've never got around to writing it. I think because the story is so strange I've been afraid to. But, in the end, the point of me writing is that I want to experience a story I never have before. No one is going to write that alien story but me, so if I want to experience it then I have to write it. I'll eventually get to it...maybe after the current wip. Good luck with revisions! And I hope you find an agent so you can make aliens cool and give hope to all of us SFF geeks!

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  2. Keep with it because everything changes we went from Vampires, Wolves, Fey and Angels to Dysotpia and next year it will be something different.

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  3. I try not to write to trends, except to avoid things agents are numb to at the time.

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  4. Holla! I never write with trends on purpose. I write what I write because I want to.

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  5. I think people say they don't like aliens as a knee-jerk reaction, but you know what? Something like 500 zillion people went to see Avatar and they LOVED it. That's what I tell myself every time I start to fret about writing sci-fi.

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  6. Woot! Congrats on being so close to finishing! And good luck on submissions! I hope it doesn't take 1000 queries. :)

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  7. Good for you. I've never read much in the way of aliens except when I took a sci-fi lit class in college, but I totally agree with you. "Write what you like." I like that better than "write what you know" even. My young adult novel is sci-fi-ish with genetic mutation and it may be hard with the glbt aspect but I like the story and that's why I wrote it.

    Good luck with your novel.

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  8. I hear aliens are the hot new thing...but you should go with it because you love it so!

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