The moment you realize you MAY succeed...but not with what you want to write

HPhatecraft said:

I've always wanted to be a writer. I've been writing for eight years, and I usually write the stories I want to read. Every time I let anyone read something I'm passionate about I get the same response: *insert blank expression here* No one likes my writing when I write what I want. My multiple critique groups didn't like it, pros I showed it to didn't like it, and I never go so much as a personalized rejection for any of my favorite pieces.

Then I said to myself, "hey, why not write what you don't like?"

So I, a man who throws a great number of the fantasy (my favorite genre) novels across the room because he can't stand them and finds them uninspired and cliched, decided to sit down and write a formulaic, uninspired, lousy fantasy short story. I hated it...and everyone loved it. I submitted it...and the second submission got it published.

My first writing credit was a story that I used another, cliched hack of a writer's stories as a template for.

I go back to writing what I want, and get the same blank looks. Then I write a lousy, cliched horror short story complete with a lightening storm. No, really, THE STORY LITERALLY TAKES PLACE DURING A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT. And guess what? MY SECOND STORY GETS PUBLISHED.

Then I write another formulaic piece of trashy horror...AND IT GOT PUBLISHED AND I GOT PAID A WHOLE $10!

Now I'm writing an urban fantasy novel about a hot bisexual man who's also a low-level witch who has to use his low-magick to defeat the powerful mages who run his city. Everyone loves it, including some published authors I showed excerpts to. I hate it. As I write and revise it, I am not looking at it with my heart but with my eye for marketing what the readers, want, and not what I find interesting.

The more I do this, the more I realize what being an author, as opposed to a writer, is. An author is one who swallows his or her pride and turns out crap that he or she doesn't care for, but what the audience wants.

[My comment: This is YOUR definition, and in my opinion it is 100% incorrect.]

I've been told that if I get enough success editors may take a chance with the stuff I want to write, but that involves slogging on for years writing about spells and gunfights and writing crappy love scenes between two unrealistically hot people.

And even if I do succeed with this crap I hate, how am I ever going to market it? I mean, I could imagine doing a personal appearance with my novel: "yeah, hi, glad you liked my paint-by-number fluff novel that I wrote just to get my name out there." Fortunately I have worked in sales, so I have experience getting people to spend money on things I wouldn't spend money on all the time.


I'm finally getting somewhere with my writing, and I feel like an absolute failure. This must be kinda how a young actor feels when they go to Hollywood and end up having to make porn or, even worse, make a Uwe Boll movie. This is the one issue I never imagined I would have to face. Anyone else have to face this issue? I just want to make huge, deep, literary fantasy...instead, I'm going to have to slog through writing and marketing crappy commercial tripe in the hope that one day someone will take a chance on what I really want to make.

EDIT: for the record, I'm not knocking people who write literary fantasy and such... [Except in the previous sentence you said you yourself write literary fantasy] just talking about my own personal struggle with writing quality fiction and getting it published.

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