You Hate Me And I'm Okay With That

I've been thinking about a writer's understanding of audience lately, partly because of this post by Susan Quinn and this one by Nathan Bransford. I think the thing that's always struck me is that not everyone will like my writing. It doesn't really matter how good I become, there will always be people who won't connect with it.

This goes for every writer. Every writer. The problem, I think, is that for many writers this readerly response (or even the mere thought of this response) is a paralyzing force, when really it should be freeing.

No one escapes this phenomena. J.K. Rowling may have sold 80 billion books (all estimations by Ink Inc.), but for all the hordes of admirers there are many who just aren't all that into her. Actually, there are legions who mock her writing and stories. There are thousands and thousands who not only fail to love her writing, but actively dislike it - even, dare I say, hate it.

Do you know how much shit that woman has taken? We'd be digging a long time to get through it, steam shovel or no steam shovel. Now, obviously dealing with the hate is much easier when you're swimming in money and have vast armies of devoted followers ready to hex anyone at your command.

So, there's no escape.

I say embrace that, and let it be freeing rather than paralyzing.

Too many writers, I think, are shut down by negative feedback, by someone not liking their story. All the more so, say, if it's a professional. A few agents didn't like the book, so it must be terrible and should be burned at once...

But the thing is, if you polled random readers the response might be the same, and through no fault of the writing. Why would your gypsy vampire novel appeal to a reader of political biographies? Agents aren't really that different. For one, they simply make mistakes on occasion, misjuding quality and potential readership. They're human. But mostly they're just trying to see something that works for them. They have different tastes. An agent isn't trying to make a decision on every story concerning it's quality and publishability - they will reject many things of publishable quality. Their question, I think, is much more narrow and focused than that: Is this something I want to represent?

Now, that earlier question concerning publishable quality will certainly be a part of this determination, but there's so much more to it than that. Do they like the vision of the story? Believe in the writer? Does it have fixable faults? Does the agent have the right contacts to sell it?

Varied responses to a story is just the odds of a subjective readership. It's not that different for an average reader: they go to the store, they pick up books, they read back blurbs. Most of them they put back down. It's not about quality, it's about fit. No book fits everyone.

And yet so many writers find a single rejection, a single negative reading response so damning. Someone didn't like it! Oh my God! I need a latte and a new life ambition! Gah!

And yet this response by a reader is only natural, really, and so obvious when we think of it. Do we like every book we pick up? And, heck, that's stuff which has already jumped a lot of publishing bars and gained that seal of approval. But some books simply aren't for us as readers. We put the book down and try to find something that is. Sometimes we guess right, sometimes we don't.

I've been reading Lorrie Moore's A Gate at the Stairs, one of the most lauded literary novels of the year. And it's brilliant, and funny, and clever... but it's not my kind of brilliant. Oh, how I want something to happen. No more clever asides, no more sharp insights into the character's past or family... just something dramatic actually happening, right now, that means something to somebody - that means something to me, the subjective reader.

But of course other readers are perfectly thrilled with this book - and there's much to be thrilled about in it. But that book simply wasn't written for me.

And that's okay. That is, in fact, inevitable. Most books weren't written for me. Nor should my books, I think, be written for everyone.

I think it's freeing, really, to accept that people won't like your writing. That's part of being human, part of being a unique particle afloat in a sea of unique particles, each one bouncing and spinning off the others, an ocean of wonderful and unpredictable chaos.

Once we accept that our writing won't be right for everyone, we can discard our fears and go about writing the story we want to write and trying to find the audience we want to reach. The question isn't who doesn't want to read this... but, rather, who does? Our job, as I see it, is to find that audience and convince them.

It won't be everyone, but we don't need everyone. Everyone is an impossible dream, a fiction, an abstraction. But there are real readers out there, real people looking for the stories that are right for them.

It's a big sea, though, so we better start swimming.

101 Dalmatians

Okay, for our 101st post here, I thought I'd show 101 pictures of Dalmatian dogs...

Yeah, okay, I'm lying. I'm not that mean. Okay, yeah, I am that mean, but simply far too lazy to do that much work. Heck, that 100 books post almost killed me.

But after my guest post over on Nathan Bransford's blog I started thinking about something. Sort of connected, really, to what I wrote about there, but a little different. Expectations, but expectations of a different sort.

I enjoyed doing that blog post, and enjoyed the wondrously kind comments. But it got me thinking about the expectations we have for an audience. Do any of you think about audience while writing? It's sort of a complex question for me, and one I'm not sure I have an answer for. Or perhaps the problem is that I have many answers for it, or one that's always shifting...

In one sense I sort of knew the audience at Nathan's, as I'm a regualr reader and commenter there. I have a feel for the tone, for some of the people. And yet you never really know what people are going to say. And for unpublished novelists it's even more so. Who's your audience? I think that holds for the reality of a possible future publication, but also for the abstract mental frameworks we hold while putting words on the page.

I know some writers think of particular people when they work, a very particular audience. Husband or wife or friend or parent. I don't think I do... and yet sometimes I'll think "What will so and so think of this?" Mostly I write for myself, for the reader in me, trying to find the story that I want to hear, that I want to read, something I couldn't find on the shelves. And yet there's certainly an awareness of other possible readers. Writing, at its heart, is an act of communication. A sharing, a bridge of ideas formed out of words and cabled sentences. So I'm aware of that potential audience, and sometimes hypothesize their reaction. To good effect... and ill. Sometimes it moves me to a clarity and simplicity that is advantageous, and sometimes it reins me in short, holds me back, makes me more conservative than I want to be... or should be.

And yet these expectations of an audience are just that... expectations. Dreams, whimsies, hypotheses. If a book comes to fruition there will be an actual audience. Real people. And the neat thing about publishing a book is finding that audience, and perhaps finding fans. Fans! People totally into and in love with what you wrote! I think most writers have some expectation of this. It's only natural.

And yet I'm guessing that this is one of those things (like my Plan, capital P) where the reality is something different than expected. I look at published writers interacting with the public and, yes, there are fans. But there are all sorts of other reactions, too. Oh yes, many strange reactions. People who hate the writing, or find it boring, or go on racist rants, or accuse the writer of racist rants, or psychoanalyze the story to make declarations about the writer's relationship with parental figures...

It's a dizzying mix of things. So it got me thinking about what my expectations of audience were, and how divorced from reality they might be.

What about you? Do you have an audience in mind while you write? What does it do for you? And do you ever picture what the real audience might say? If you've had something widely read, what was the reaction like and how was it different (or similar) to what you imagined?

I'm thinking that while I understand in an abstract sense what a really large audience will be like, it would probably be a rude awakening in reality. A bit of a chasm, perhaps, between those expectations and the actual experience of an audience of readers.