Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Writing for hire.

We had a guy come to writer's group awhile back, who after he left, Linda said: "He won't be back."

"Why do you say that?"

"He's interested in "literature."

"Oh."

See, I don't think that way.  Books are books.  Writing is writing.  It so happens that I Want and Like writing genre fiction.  Frankly, the best practitioners of genre fiction are every bit as good as the so called "literary" writers.  Most of those "literary" writers pretty much bore me.

Now if you switch the conversation to "commercial" versus writing for "art," I can see how that might be something to talk about.

I can't write a "licensed" product -- which would include almost all DC and Marvel comics, for instance.  I just couldn't motivate myself to write someone else's idea --whether it be Star Trek or Star Wars or Magic or The Shadow or Halo or Warcraft or ...whatever.

It has to be MY idea.  MY book.

I don't look down on anyone who can write for hire.  In fact, I'm in awe of it.

I just can't see putting myself through that.

Writing is hard enough.

5 comments:

Duncan McGeary said...

Linda and I just had a long conversation about writing. It's so cool when we are both active writing at the same time...

She picked a book by a well-known genre writer for her reader's group, that is apparently an attempt at a literary novel.

She said she's bored stiff with it.

Nevada Barr.

I had found her last two mysteries to be overly pretentious as well.

Too bad, she wrote some real corkers early on, when she was writing mysteries mysteries.

Leitmotiv said...

unrelated: hey you said you were going to be short on The Hobbit this season. If I bring in my very good and clean copy of The Hobbit, will you trade a pack of Return to Ravnica for it?

It's this version: http://tinyurl.com/9lp5rm8

Leitmotiv said...

I'll take that as a no.

Duncan McGeary said...

Opps. Sorry.

I don't generally take trade-ins, but sure, I can do that. Just tell them I said O.K. They can see this on the blog if they doubt you. ;)

Leitmotiv said...

okay great... I'm sure you'll sell it before Christmas! Thanks!