Your writing voice, platform, and public persona…
Confused by all the blogs, magazines, and books claiming to tell you what you need to do to be a successful writer? I used to be, because often advice from different sources is contradictory. I’ve said it before in this blog: there are no sufficient conditions for writing success! To use a cliché, there are no silver bullets. There are some necessary conditions. You have to be able to write, for example. I’ll limit this discussion to writing fiction because that’s what I do. I’m guessing what I have to say is partially applicable to non-fiction, but you might want to look elsewhere.
First, let me start by tilting at the windmills of word games often used in writing advice. Writer’s Digest plays these games all the time. For fiction, writer and author are interchangeable. Yes, I know, advice columnists often play the game of saying anyone can be a writer, but only some can be an author. There’s a bit of dishonest snobbery in that, but also an implied degree of commitment. If you’ve writing any piece of fiction—short story, novella, novel, flash fiction, biography, etc—you’re the author of that piece. You own it. The government even says you own it. You’re also a writer. Maybe you’re not a full-time writer—many people can’t make a living at it—but you’ve sat down and put words into your word processor or even on a napkin to get there.
Second, and this has two parts: you are what you write and you should write what you know. The first has to do with your voice, platform, and public persona—all these things are the same, no matter what other people say. But they aren’t you. Of course, your life experiences—tastes and distastes, joys and sorrows, people you’ve met, places you’ve been—all that can influence your writing, but they don’t have too. Consider a vampire romance, for example—not my cup o’ tea, but certainly popular these days. I’m willing to bet the author is not a vampire. I might hedge the bet a bit on whether she’s experienced the steamy sex contained therein, but it’s also a fairly sure bet she hasn’t (even more so if the author is a he and not a she!).
Your voice, platform, or public persona is determined by your opus, of course. But the contents of that opus can be varied. Some authors stick with one genre, but there are many exceptions. Consider Ken Follett’s opus, for example, or, more recently, J. K. Rowling’s move from the fantasy genre. Those variations also belong to that author’s platform. In my case, my first two books were even non-fiction, both in Spanish, one on the information revolution (written with Bernardo Gomez, for secondary teachers, when computers were beginning to be seen in high schools) and one on quantum mechanics. That’s part of my public persona—as an ex-scientist, it’s reasonable that my fiction has a sci-fi flavor.
The last is a very strong counter example to the statement that you should write what you know. I know—or used to know—quantum mechanics. I’m not going to put that kind of detailed knowledge in a work of fiction. I guarantee you I would lose the few readers I have if I did. But my physics background allows me to put in some buzzwords and reasonable extrapolations in my books that might not be there otherwise. Yet, in many cases, I need to do research on a topic just like any other sci-fi author. For example, my new book, No Amber Waves of Grain, will complete the “Clones and Mutants Series.” When I wrote the first book in that series, Full Medical, I had to research clones because one of the main characters (she’s in all three books) is a biogenetics engineering expert. Anyone can do that. You don’t have to be an ex-scientist.
Finally (and again, Writer’s Digest is an obvious culprit), people giving writing advice often paint horrors about how much you will have to spend in time and money in order to self-publish a book, whereas you can just be a happy, happy writer if you traditionally publish. False! To prepare your MS (short for manuscript), you have to do the same work whether you self- or traditionally publish. That MS has to be the best it can be. The advantage of self-publishing is you don’t have to go through a gatekeeper (aka agent) who is only interested in passing the sure thing onto a publishing house. Of course, she has her own ideas about what’s a sure thing because she knows how to write. The latter is generally not true, by the way—otherwise, she’d be writing!
To the extent that the gatekeeper serves as an objective critic of your MS (very rare, because they’re biased by what they think editors want), you can achieve the same benefit, and more of it, by appealing to a critique group or what’s known as beta readers. You might want to do that anyway, even if you want to follow the traditional publishing route. But beware! Critique groups might change your voice to the point that it’s no longer yours. Other writers have their own idea about how to write a book a fortiori. They might not see that your idea is original, different, and something fresh readers will turn to.
People pushing traditional publishing will also tell you that your publisher will take care of proofreading (remember, your MS should already be content edited and copy edited), cover selection, and promotion. Again, this isn’t necessarily true. As a reviewer, I’ve seen some real clunkers released by the traditional establishments. Either the MS is a clunker to begin with (that would be the author’s fault), or some hack messed up the proofreading. As an indie writer, you can do a good job of that all by your lonesome. On the promotion end, your publisher probably won’t do much more than distribution to the big book barns and a few bookstores (fewer every day). Especially if you don’t have a strong platform, your publisher will expect you to do the promotion of your book.
Most traditional publishers don’t give you much say in the cover. Indie authors have complete say, but too often neglect the cover, which is even important for ebooks. While it’s true you generally don’t pay for cover art with the traditional publisher, it’s advisable that you do with your self-published book, unless you are a person of many talents, including graphic artist.
The conclusion: yes, indie authors have to spend some time and money whereas traditional publishers sometimes take care of some of that. However, the indie author enjoys complete control. You don’t have to pay for an editor, formatter (the process of changing your MS to usable media), cover artist, or book promotion. You can if you want to—there are people and services that can do all that, for a price. Again, as a reviewer, I’ve seen some real clunkers where I say to myself, “That author should have paid for X.”
It’s wonderful that we have all these publishing choices in this digital age. It gives a writer a freedom to create his own platform as he wants to create it. But beware of pied pipers—people making grandiose promises of silver bullets that will guarantee you success. There aren’t any. But even the measures of success are misleading. What is it? Greater than 10,000 readers for one of your books? 5,000? My take is that if one of my books has entertained just one reader outside my immediate circle of family and friends, my book is a success. I write in order to entertain via a story like the bards of old, and this bard is entertained by creating that story. Don’t worry about measures of success. Worry, if you must, about your next book—and always honing your writing skills.
That, in fact, is the last piece of bad advice that I want to shoot down. Writing fiction is not a business—it’s art. That you can make money from one of your books is no different than a painter making money off one of his paintings. My father, an expert landscape painter, never achieved fame or fortune with his paintings, but he just had to paint. It was in his blood. For me, writing fiction is the same thing. In many ways, I regret that I put it off for so long. But I can now say that I have all the necessary conditions for writing—in particular, I have enough life experience and a long list of what-ifs that will guarantee that I never have writer’s block, whatever that is. In short, I have many stories to entertain you with, but probably not enough time to write them all down!
Next week: Editing myths.
In libris libertas….
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