Which would you take?

The first. So I could afford to write whatever I bloody well wanted to afterward.

Twilight. I think a lot of "classics" suck and are just ways for academia to intellectually lord it over schoolchildren.

Something the order of Twilight, Harry Potter, DaVinci Code and the like.

The thing about most of the "classics" of literature is that they were the success stories of commercial fiction of their time. Something about them hit a chord that allows them to still be read decades, centuries after their original publication. Gotta make the first mark before the second can be reached as far as I can see.

How many children's classics are still read by children anyhow? Books like Treasure Island and Little Women come to mind, but they're mostly read by adults as far as I can tell. Everyone knows Alice In Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz...how many children have actually read the originals, as opposed to the Disney and MGM versions? Beatrix Potter and Pooh are still read, but they're very simple books, not comparable to Harry Potter or Twilight.

Children don't really have the intellectual capacity to comprehend things like the civil war or sailing ships unless they've had some direct experience with them. That's why children like to read books that take place in fanciful versions of their own world. Harry Potter is going to seem terribly dated in fifty years, and young children will probably not read it because they won't know what a flying station wagon or wild football (Quidditch) match would be like.

I'm more into the immediate gratification. Besides, I wouldn't give a rat's butt if I had written something that successful.

I would go for the fun stuff, mainly because that's all I'm interested in, in the first place. I would never read a classic as I don't care for literary fiction. If I became successful, I would continue writing what I'd read. I am a hard-core genre reader AND writer.

I read some classics in high school and they were awful. Just not my thing. Most recently, I tried to read an Edgar Allen Poe "classic" and it was horribly written.

I know just as many readers and writers that wouldn't touch genre fiction with a ten foot pole (okay it's a cliche, sue me).

You'd be lucky as hell to write either.

Classics are not all, or even mostly, "literary" fiction.

ClaudiaGray said:

You'd be lucky as hell to write either.

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I don't believe in luck.

I believe in 'bloody hard work' and 'making my own fate'.

You would first have to answer the question, "What's my dream as a writer."

It's a cruel world out there. Give me a book like Twilight all the time.

The second. But "my dream as a writer" is to create the most beautiful piece of literature that I can possibly come up with...not to quit my day job.

DeleyanLee said:

The thing about most of the "classics" of literature is that they were the success stories of commercial fiction of their time.

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Yes and no. Most of the classic authors we read today were outsold by now-forgotten writers of market-focused fiction. Dickens really is the exception here; Jane Austen and the Brontes, for example, were vastly outsold by Maria Edgeworth and other "moral novelists," and Fitzgerald and Hemingway were vastly outsold by writers like Booth Tarkington, Anne Douglas Sedgwick, and Dorothy Canfield Fisher, not to mention genre writers of the day like Zane Grey and Edgar Wallace.

Bestsellerdom is not enough on its own to guarantee a literary legacy. Beaumont and Fletcher were more popular, in their day, than Shakespeare. Poe could hardly make a living as a writer, while his contemporary George Washington Harris accumulated a tidy fortune.

I think that 100 years from now people will still be reading Stephen King and J.K. Rowling, but not Dan Brown or Stephenie Meyer. Mastery is what lasts; even page-turning plots and appeal to reader wish-fulfillment don't overcome barely competent prose and flat characters. Nobody reads E. Phillips Oppenheim or Harold Bell Wright or Vincent Blasco Ibanez or Ouida today, but they were once blockbuster bestsellers in the Brown and Meyer mold.

And, oh! I didn't answer the question. I'd much rather write a book that was well-received by readers than one that gained posthumous acclaim from schoolteachers and professors of literature.

I don't see any squirming going on, but maybe that's just me. Give me the money, honey! Knowing that I gave so many readers a bit of escapist fun is the best reward I can think of. I don't care about being remembered. That's the ego talking anyway. Who cares what happens after I'm dead? I'll be DEAD.

No matter what, though, I'll write the best stories I possibly can and keep working on the craft. That's a given. But I'm also aware that my best efforts may never rise to "classic" level, and that's okay too.

Why is it amazing? Posthumous respect doesn't pay the light bill.

Amadeus is fiction, and it goes much deeper than the money/respect false dichotomy. Yes, I'm an enormous fan of the play.

vrabinec said:

Okay, just remember, if you select the money, the "fun stuff", your work will be read this year, and next year, but in ten years, nobody will know it ever existed except for a handful of librarians. If it's a classic, two hundred years from now, your name will live on.

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You didn't say this in the original post, no fair changing the rules halfway through.

I actually find this tough to answer, because of course I want both. I also have to ask myself would I be compromising doing the first, or blissfully unaware? What I mean is, Meyer doesn't think her writing is bad, even if lots of other people do. So if I wrote the next book a la Twilight, and was proud of what I did, made lots of money from it etc, despite the critical response, why would I not be happy and proud in the moment? How would I know it was going to fade into nothingness in a few years? The ignorance part of it, makes it far more palatable.

But knowing for sure that my book would fade into nothingness in the Twilight option, but being known for all time in the classic version . . . I'd probably take the latter. But I would take the latter with the comfort of knowing in time my books would be a big deal.

If I was making this choice with the ignorance of just living life in the present, I'd probably choose the first.

And to be fair, the money thing is a pretty big deal.

And I agree, no squirming here. Just because people on another site are squirming, doesn't mean you should apply that to this one. We are all unique after all . . .

ChristineR said:

How many children's classics are still read by children anyhow? Books like Treasure Island and Little Women come to mind, but they're mostly read by adults as far as I can tell. Everyone knows Alice In Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz...how many children have actually read the originals, as opposed to the Disney and MGM versions? Beatrix Potter and Pooh are still read, but they're very simple books, not comparable to Harry Potter or Twilight.

Children don't really have the intellectual capacity to comprehend things like the civil war or sailing ships unless they've had some direct experience with them. That's why children like to read books that take place in fanciful versions of their own world. Harry Potter is going to seem terribly dated in fifty years, and young children will probably not read it because they won't know what a flying station wagon or wild football (Quidditch) match would be like.

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Are you serious? My nine-year-old's current favorite books are Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson, and White Fang, by Jack London. And I never give my kids abridged books.

When he was six he read the original Peter Pan, though The Trumpet of the Swan replaced it as his favorite a year later.

My six-year-old daughter isn't quite as precocious in her ability to read on her own, but she spends hours attempting to read Charlotte's Web and begs me to read Heidi and The Wind in the Willows aloud—again.

Maybe they don't understand everything, but they understand enough to appreciate a great story, and the things that are strange to them raise questions that are a launching pad for learning. Thanks to Kidnapped, my son wanted to read everything about Scotland he could get his hands on, and he now knows more about it than I do.

I'm no snob—I'd take Twilight's success for the reasons already mentioned, so that I could write other (hopefully better) stuff later. And I love "genre" fiction. But let's give the kids some credit.

I see squirming as discomfort, not people making reasoned answers that sometimes might result in a non-choice. But whatever. Just seems weird dissing people when you want their answers is all (and yes, I see telling people they're squirming as a negative).

ChristineR said:

Children don't really have the intellectual capacity to comprehend things like the civil war or sailing ships unless they've had some direct experience with them. That's why children like to read books that take place in fanciful versions of their own world. Harry Potter is going to seem terribly dated in fifty years, and young children will probably not read it because they won't know what a flying station wagon or wild football (Quidditch) match would be like.

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I think you underestimate children. Sure they might need to ask more questions and they might not understand some things, but there are lots of adults who read books with references they don't get as well. I mean think of how many children are crazy about dinosaurs, or about castles and knights and kings and queens. They don't have direct experience with any of these things and yet a lot of kids are crazy about them. When I was a kid I loved the American Girl books which were all historical and didn't exactly relate to my direct experiences in terms of details but which fascinated me none the less. Here's the thing: It's not the flying car, etc, that draw kids into things like Harry Potter (although they might love those as well), it's Harry and Ron and Hermione. It's the relationships. It's the common experiences that most of the kids would share with the characters that are not confined to a time period such as dealing with bullies. The main reason older novels end up not being read much by kids has little to do with their concerning sailing ships or the Civil War and everything to do with a fascination with the new that our society has and secondly with the language which does change and is more confined to time period while the stories aren't (a parallel for adults is Shakespeare whose language is difficult for many today to comprehend right away and which scares people off but whose stories still draw people in).

Oh, to the original question: I guess I'd lean more toward Twilight than the book that only becomes popular after I'm dead. I'm selfish. I want to know that someone enjoys my work and I don't care whether or not everyone thinks it's well written as long as it meets my own quality standards and those of my future readers. You can't please everyone.