Writing with your Passions
If you are looking through Twitter or other social media accounts, you will see many agents list certain books as part of their manuscript wish list or #MSWL. There’s even a site dedicated to this collection of things agents want to see. This is quite helpful as you are looking to submit your work. But there is a caution here: don’t write a story just because agents are looking for it.
Here’s the thing about the publishing world: the books that are submitted today won’t be published for usually two years if not more. And on top of that, it usually take about a year to write a book. So if you go on manuscript wish list today, select a topic and submit it in a year, there’s a good chance the agent whose list hole you were trying to fill was filled by someone else long ago.
This is the same with following trends and writing about those books. Say you read Twilight and thought--I can write something better than that. One year later, you have your paranormal vampire romance ready to go--but so do three thousand other writers. Now the market is saturated with a novel like yours, and no one wants it.
The problem with following trends is not just the saturation of the market, however. If you’re writing books solely for the purpose of appeasing an agent, your writing may be lacking the passion that it needs to turn heads. If the writer is not excited about the topic they are writing about, it WILL show in their writing.
So what do you do with your zombie apocalypse dystopian story that you wrote during your flurry of passion? Because this happens--you grow passionate about a project that is out of trend. Are you just stuck with this novel no one wants?
Don’t look for the nearest waste basket just yet! Hold onto it, because sometimes trends that were out of style come back in five years later. Keep writing, and keep filling the pages with your passion. As you write, your technique will improve. This is a marathon game, not a sprint. Those who don’t give up and hold on until the finish line are the ones who will make it in the end!
