Why Writers Should Love What They Write by Annette Dashofy

One of those questions that tend to pop up during discussions with aspiring authors revolves around what genres are hot and which one they should write. 

For starters, I highly recommend against writing toward trends. It takes a while to write a book. Perhaps a year. Perhaps longer. If you read an agent’s wish list today, by the time you complete the draft, polish and revise the pages, and start to submit, a year or two (or three) could pass. By then, that same agent has been flooded by manuscripts in that trendy genre and don’t want to see another. 

A bigger reason is you might not like or understand the genre that’s trending. Example: Romantasy (romance/fantasy) has been the big seller recently. But I’ve never read it and would pull my hair out trying to write it. 

Disliking the genre or subject about which you’re writing is not good. Believe me, the reader/agent/editor will know you aren’t having fun. 

Is “having fun” important when you’re “working” on a book? Oh, heck yeah. 

Why? I’ll give you two reasons. One: unless you’re Stephen King or James Patterson, you likely aren’t going to make enough to live on. Ask a group of published authors, and most will tell you that we write because we love it. Passion is a requirement. We aren’t writing because that royalty check is paying our rent. 

And two: you need to love the story you’re writing… because you’re going to have to read it over and over and over again. 

The real world of writing doesn’t involve slapping down that first draft and sending it out into the world. After you type THE END for the first time, you need to go back and rewrite. And revise. And rewrite again. Even when the plot shines and the characters sing, you need to make multiple passes to check for overused words. Just for example. I keep a list of my favorites, which will be somewhat different than other writers’, but “just” seems to appear on everyone’s overused list. 

Next, let’s say you’re blessed to find an agent. That agent will send you edits to make your book more likely to please an editor. More rewrites, during which you will add 100 more “justs.” So, you have to go back and take them out. 

Then, your agent sells your book to a publisher. You’re assigned an editor… who edits. There will be story edits (often called developmental edits), when you’ll be asked to flesh out some threads and eliminate others. You’ll also need to make sure those changes don’t affect other aspects of the book, such as one line of dialogue 200 pages away from where you changed things. Continuity is important. 

After that’s complete, your copyeditor sends the manuscript back to you again. This time you have to add or subtract commas, make odd spellings consistent, and clarify terms the copyeditor didn’t understand. 

You think you’re now finished? Oh, no. Now, you have to proofread the entire manuscript, possibly more than once.

 Don’t think you get to skip all those revisions if you’ve chosen to indie publish. You still need an editor or two after your team of beta readers go over it. Trust me on this. If you try to bypass all those extra eyes on your work, some reader will email you and report every single typo you’ve made in the “finished” novel. 

You will ultimately read your book a minimum of seven or eight times. Minimum. 

So, you better write a story that you love, because you’re going to spend many hours reading and rereading it. 

Fellow Writers Who Kill, how many times on average do you read and revise a single manuscript? 

Readers, have you ever found more than one or two typos in a book you’re reading? (Please do not name the author if you have.) Do typos or continuity errors take you out of the story?