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Artistic Freedom and Being a Victim
Getting Tired… You would think that eventually fiction writers, as a group, would start getting tired of being victims. I mean really tired. One of the wonderful things that this new world has given all writers is artistic freedom. We’ve talked here about some of the ramifications of how writers use that freedom over the last few weeks. But another aspect of the freedom writers have is to make choices in the areas of how they will work, who they will work with, and so on. These choices are very much aspects of artistic freedom. In the old days of traditional-publishing-only, I used to scoff at writers sitting in bars…
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Artistic Choice and The Voice Finals
ARTISTIC CHOICE AND THE VOICE… In case you missed The Voice finals tonight, you should really find it and watch it. Some amazing music. And great interviews. Completely entertaining. But as you are watching it, put on your writer hat. Not your creative hat, but the hat that observes and sees patterns. Over and over and over again the three judges with artists left praised how their artists were original, not like anyone else in the world. The judges kept saying that their artists were doing their own things, had their own way of approaching music. It was a mantra and clearly the most important thing to the judges. They kept…
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Belief and Artistic Choice
Belief Can Cause Interesting Results… Sometimes Wrong… Another post in this loose series of posts about how writers have artistic freedom in this modern world. And about the choices artists make with that freedom. I have noticed an interesting pattern over the last four or five years about belief and the choices writers make because of a belief. And I am not talking some religious or political belief. Nope. But I am talking about belief based on little-to-no information or facts. And decisions based on myths that appear true to the observer, thus making the observer believe them. Now I have done a number of books beating on some of…
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Artistic Choice and Making Money
I Love Making Money with My Fiction… For some reason, not sure how, some people have thought I am against making money with fiction writing. Never ever said that. In fact, that is so far from the truth as to be laughable. I make great money with my fiction now. Not as good as many, but better than I ever did when I was writing for money as a ghost and media writer. But for some reason I use the term “artistic” and “choice” and then suggest that writers should take the long-term goal and write what they love and people automatically knee-jerk reaction that I am against making money…
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Sales vs People vs Artistic Freedom
Sales: A Horrible Way to Think About Readers… That’s my opinion and I wish I could say I always believed that, but I would be lying. When I was working traditional publishing, I only looked at sales numbers, copies shipped, and numbers on royalty statements. About eight or nine years ago, right at the start of the indie movement, I did yet another count of the numbers of books I had sold. Just over seventeen million. That’s right, I had seventeen million copies of my books in print as of eight or so years ago. And I have been selling steadily since. Both the traditional books still sell and my indie books chug…
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An Interesting Assumption
Thinking and Knowing Are Two Different Things… Over the last week or so I have been talking about having the freedom, the artistic freedom, of being able to write what we want to write in this new world. Both the good side of that freedom and the side I see as a problem. And the area that the most people seem to get stuck on is my suggestion to write what you love, not to market. (You can go back and read my points on that topic over the last week. Read the comments as well.) But tonight I wanted to point out one simple problem the people who write…
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Courage in a World of Artistic Freedom
Artistic Freedom From a Different Perspective… Last week I did three posts about the artistic freedom that all fiction writers have in this new world. Artistic freedom, at its base level, means the freedom to pick your own path in fiction writing, write what you want to write for whatever reasons you want to write it, and be responsible at the same time for your own mistakes. Artistic freedom means having the choice to try to chase a traditional big-five book deal, even though the consequences of catching that brass ring is loss of the book and massive frustration. Artistic freedom means you can write whatever novel or story you want.…
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Writing to Market… Timing
Artistic Freedom Part Three… I got some great comments on yesterdays post on this topic, but a few people, both in the comments and in private e-mails to me are confused about what I mean exactly about not writing to market. I finish my work, don’t I? Isn’t that a form of writing to market? Nope. I try to sell what I do write. Is that a form of writing to market? Nope. What I have been attempting to say is this: When you decide, before you have written a word, to do a project because you think it will sell (because you know more than anyone about selling books,…
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Chasing the Market
Artistic Freedom Part Two… Yesterday I talked about the wonderful artistic freedom this new world gives writers. If, and only if, the writer takes the freedom and even knows how to recognizes the freedom. I got a number of questions, mostly in e-mails, about what I meant by not writing to market in that post. In short, writing to market means thinking that writing something you have heard is selling well only because you want to make money. In other words, you write into areas you don’t know, don’t even much like, or even like to write, just for the hope of a few more sales. Horrid writer death that…
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Change of Format Again
Change of Format Again… Okay, I tried the other form for an entire week and honestly, some of it worked and some of it didn’t work for me and some of it didn’t work for numbers of others. Got a few comments, but mostly private e-mails saying people liked the new form on the main page and they liked being able to forward and tweet posts, but not the form having to go to another page to see the counts. So going to leave the new form on the front page. All good there. And going to keep doing posts that are not cluttered so people can share them with ease…