Write (do) what only you can...

One piece of writing advice, as it has jack-hammered its way into my concrete skull, is this: Don’t chase the market, don’t try to write the next bestseller, or even what you think your readers want. Write only what you are immensely curious about, what you want to discover. Write what you love. Or fear. Or lust after. Even if it is hopelessly geeky compared to what you think others are writing. Write what only you can. Everything else is garbage, a complete waste of time. In fact, if you aren’t in love with your story, your characters, I doubt you’ll even finish the story.

Some of the best, truest things I’ve written you’ll never see on a library shelf. Ten years before Star-Crossed was published, I wrote my first y.a. novel called “With a Little Luck” and it won the 1996 Maui Writers Award. Jubilation! Yet sadly, “With a Little Luck” had no luck at all. I could not find a legitimate publisher on the face of the planet. Many of the rejection slips (enough to wallpaper a small room) had notes scrawled on them. Like, great writing, but not for us… Lyrical, and well-crafted, but we don’t think there’s a strong enough market for it. Beautiful story, but we’ll have to pass. Would love to see something else, something trendy and hot that’ll make us a bazillion dollars…

I gave “Luck” a proper burial and went on to write Star-Crossed, which the New York Public Library honored as one of the Books for the Teen Age – 2007. Jubilation! (But Star-Crossed is definitely not a book for the masses. You have to be a bit of a geek to enjoy it. It's definitely not making Random House any money, but then so few people know about it.)


The best reward is when someone reads what I have written and they get it. We connect! They can experience vicariously what I experienced, or imagined; oh my God, that’s the magic of writing! Amazingly, there are other geeks like me, I am not alone in the universe!

At best, writing is an ongoing discovery, a solitary life-long university. So write (or do) what you love -- even if the money doesn’t follow. Time is short and the water rises, so write what only you can!