Okay, so Blogger straightened some things out. My main headline is now black instead of hot pink. This is good. I don't like the brown headings, though, at the start of each post. Do you?
My friend Sara suggests I do my own blog and she says she'll show me how so I can just link it to my Web site and not be so reliant on Blogger. Did I tell you Sara is an angel? (Sara, if you check in here, post your blog URL under comments if you're okay with that so everyone can visit).
So it's Saturday morning and I read an email from an author friend whose book came out last year and has done respectably. He was working on another proposal that his agent thought would sell--sort of a sequel. He says he woke up, shaking in his PJs, afraid that it was the wrong thing to be working on, and told his agent he changed his mind and was going to go in another direction. His heart just wasn't in it, not like the first book which was straight from the heart.
I wrote back to him, said his email raised an important question: How do you know when what your agent has in mind for you is the right thing, or not? In this wooly world of publishing, whose advice do you take? It's hard even listening to your own heart, your own intuition amid the din of what's selling.
Does it come down to having fun? What do you enjoy working on? If you enjoy it, then that's what you should be working on, and if you don't, scrap it?
Let's hear your comments....
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1 comment:
Since I don't have an agent or a book deal, this sounds like a pleasant conundrum to have.
I'm going to offer my opinion in light of that disclaimer, anyway. :)
If I'm presenting possible projects and my heart is not in them in the first place, then I'm treating writing like a job and not like a calling. If you are called to write about Nascar racing, then it's not in anyone's best interests to pitch yourself as someone who can churn out Regency romance. You might be *able* to, and better so than a zillion other writers, but let the people who have a love for that sort of project be the ones to do the heavy lifting there.
I understand that circumstances can change over time. I imagine that if JK Rowling came forward and said "You know what? Book Seven? Naw..." I'd be extremely disappointed, but I'd honor her right not to write it.
Being a slave to any particular project sounds like the sort of torture that life is too short to endure.
That's a way longer comment than I meant to leave. :P
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