[From the Archive] Multiple Ruts
From October 2009 – no catastrophic hard drive failure this week. Really. Last week’s adventure was NOT catastrophic failure, it was user fail.
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I had a whole article written and ready to go – in long hand, and left in another folder. Of course. It’s been an eventful week. My computer’s hard drive failed on a spectacular level. This is the first time I’ve written anything on my laptop in a week. Gotta love Real Life, right? So, my computer has a new “heart”. I went to the writer’s workshop put on by David Wolverton this weekend, and that’s where I’m going with this besides this one big thing. BACK UP EARLY AND OFTEN. I haven’t lost much data, but I have lost some. That’s never a Good Thing.
So, the writer’s workshop. Why did I go? There’s always something to learn. Did I? Yes. There’s always a tip or something – if the person teaching the workshop has more experience than you – that you haven’t heard before. The Wolverton workshop also talked quite a bit about business and income streams for authors. That was cool, and that’s where this article comes into play. Wolverton’s advice – write within your “rut” – or voice – but to develop multiple “ruts”.
With screenplays, it’s okay to write across genres. The more the better. It shows Hollywood you have “range” and mad writing skillz. However, in fiction, it’s a bit more difficult to cross genres because of Book Scan. His point is this – what are good book sale and print run numbers in one genre may not be good numbers in another genre. This is one reason why authors create pseudonyms when writing in other genres – if they’re “smaller” writers than say, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, or Stephen King. BUT… it’s possible to maintain your identity in multiple ruts within genres.
Writers like David Wolverton, who writes “fat fantasy” under David Farland has done this. Rachel Caine has very successfully done this. Both write fantasy in adult-reader fantasy and young-adult fantasy. Both stay in their genres and voices but with different effects. Wolverton’s Young Adult fantasy books are more humorous and grow to more serious to then move his younger readers into older readers. Caine has taken her weather warden adventures, and gone vampire, but still – her Morganville readers can then find familiar tone/style/adventure with the Wardens as they grow up and look for more things to read.
These multiple ruts can help you show range while not jeopardizing your sales. They allow you to develop other worlds and characters while building audiences which can cross over to other lines and genres. All the while allowing you as a writer to keep your worlds, plots, and stories fresh. So, for once, “rut” doesn’t have to be a bad word.
The key to working in multiple ruts is to work. Ruts don’t occur from wishing and thinking, but by persistently working and putting in the time. If you want to work in multiple ruts, you must first do the work. So, less talking, more doing. Here we go.
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picked up the Atlantic’s 2011 fiction issue. See the essay about teaching fiction workshops at Harvard written by Bret Anthony Johnston, “Don’t Write What You Know.” Johnston requires his students to ignore the common advice to “write what you know” because that path suggests the author has value. Johnston argues, “…the authors don’t matter. What matters is our characters, those constructions of imagination that can transcend our biases and agendas, our egos and entitlements and flesh.”