What to write

There’s a funny thing about all of this.  Things are an “accepted truth” until they’re not.  Until they are overthrown by someone who doesn’t see the rules as written in stone and is willing to throw themselves against them until they’re no longer paramount.

 One thing about going along with established procedures and expectations…doing so all too often leads to works of limited originality because too many top dogs don’t deal well with innovation or creativity.  They’re afraid to take any risks and the art suffers as a consequence.

 Bureaucracy breeds and emphasizes conformity.  And time and time again the public, hungry for something different, shocks the bureaucracy by embracing something that seems to break all the rules in which the establishment has invested itself.

 Stifling creativity results in far too many works that end up being entirely too similar to one another because writers are afraid to experiment and push the envelope.  There are those who find comfort in this, but there are also many who get bored of reading stuff that doesn’t break any new ground.  I know certain whole genres and sub-genres that have reached the saturation point and are getting to the point I can’t even read them anymore because they’re boring me to tears.

 High Fantasy is one of them.  It’s getting harder and harder to find something in that sub-genre that doesn’t lean so heavily on certain established “truths” that it seems to border on plagarism.  And a lot of long-time fans are writing reviews that say “oh, this is just a ripoff of _____.”  They blame the authors when the real culprits are the publishing houses who are fearful of anything that might diverge from accepted rules of the sub-genre.

 Urban fantasy has gotten far more popular lately.  Back in the early 90s Mercedes Lackey wrote some great examples of the sub-genre, but ended up giving up on them because they weren’t selling as well as she would have liked.  Up until fairly recently, there were only about two dozen notable works of urban fantasy out there.  Now there are hundreds.  And as more are written, we’re going to start seeing examples of “established doctrine” that will begin to make them increasingly homogenous.  This is simply the way the industry works.  Because certain themes and styles have seemed to work so well in the past, they want new pieces that repeat certain concepts over and over again and will reject those works that don’t fit their preconceived molds.

 The recording industry suffers from similar issues–that’s why as one band gets popular, a score of new bands that sound almost the same seem to appear out of nowhere, making “art” increasingly “artificial.”  Television and movies are also affected by the same reasoning.  If THIS works, let’s beat it to death until everyone is so sick of it they don’t want anything more to do with it.  The only people this truly serves is THEM, who manage to stuff their bank accounts before the market for it vanishes into the ether.

 Regardless of success, there’s a certain amount of merit in the adage, “write what makes you happy.”  They say that if you write for what the “market” seems to want, whether it speaks to you or not, you’ll end up with stuff that may earn you commercial success, but leaves you cold.  Or you might end up missing the boat entirely as peoples’ tastes move on to the “next big thing” before you have a chance to join the crowd.

 Many of the most astounding successes in literature, movies, music, and television have been “cult” favorites–ones that originally attracted a small but loyal audience but have since grown to be forces of nature, a law unto themselves.

 Historically speaking, the establishment has been astoundingly bad at choosing possible winners.  A lot of what are now legendary works of fiction were rejected time and again by industry “experts.”  All too often they’re not reflecting the wishes of the buying public, but making judgments based on their own prejudices.  And the more established THEY are, the less aware they tend to be regarding changing trends.

 The best advice might be to write what makes you happy and hope that it finds a following outside the pack.  There doesn’t really seem to be a way to truly guarantee commercial success, but there certainly is a way to guarantee that you’re pleased with what you yourself create.