Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan
I think of myself as the literary equivalent of a carpenter: I make chairs for people to sit in; and when I'm done with a chair, I sell it for a reasonable price, and start to making another when I'm ready. I enjoy chair-making, but that doesn't mean I feel I must give them away, for the sake of knowing some lucky soul sat in my chair. And when the market decides it won't buy any more chairs, I'll stop making them.
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I've done a bunch of writing for money as a journalist and consultant, and in those realms I'm happy to give the people what the people want. They're buying a utilitarian product and I understand that. It's a straight-up business deal: my time and skill for their money.
I feel differently about my novels. If I want to make money writing, there are better ways to do it than by writing fiction. So novels, for me, have to be about something else. Sorry to say it, particularly in light of all the lit fic bashing above, but it has to be fun and it has to contain some note of (really, forgive me here!) artistic expression.
Of course I'd love to sell a godzillion copies of my novels. But in an ordered ranking of my goals, in the fiction category I'd first much rather write what I actually want to write. If I sell Amanda Hocking-ish quantities, well, great. And if not — I won't be whining about it. It's not really the first thing I'm trying to accomplish.
Sometimes writing is a business. Sometimes it's not. And sometimes it's in a gray zone in between that isn't so easy to explain or understand.