murder.booklocker.com

Since seeing my first novel in print, it has been hard not to think about what goes into making a book worth publishing? It seems incredibly backwards to me. Writers write. What they write shouldn’t be influenced by what everyone else is writing or what someone thinks that they should be writing. That said, I found myself doing some research to discover whether my new plot idea was actually new. After all, maybe everyone else was already doing it and I just wasn’t aware of it.

So I typed in some search words at Google. The third link on the list took me to a writer who appeared to be doing what I wanted to do. [I'm somewhat relieved to find out that that's not true!] Anyway, after reading some of his blog entries and visiting his website, I sent an email off to him.

Within two hours his wife kindly responded. She said that no, she wasn’t aware of anyone doing what I proposed in a MYSTERY novel but that the subject matter was currently VERY hot. Then she said:

“What you are doing is risky because many publishers probably have something in production that is similar.  You really should be getting the advice of your agent.”

Well, number one, I don’t have an agent. Can’t imagine having one and for sure can’t imagine letting one tell what to write or not.

Secondly, her use of the word risky got me thinking. I suppose that if next months’ food supply depends on my coming up with a story to sell that I would be plenty worried about the “risk.” After all, who would buy my story if they had six others just like it? What would make mine rise to the top of the pile? She did go on to say:

“If you want my advice, the best things to do is really concentrate on making the voice uniquely interesting and that is something that sets yourself apart no matter the subject matter.”

But back to the idea of risky writing. I suppose that to ignore the risk is to face the possibility that you’ll wind up with lots of unsold manuscripts. Unfortunately I can’t imagine doing anything else.