❤️ 🛸 How to Know What Kind of Book You Should Write
Quick way to know right here!
Hi writer,
What kind of a book should you write?
This might seem like an obvious question. You might already know you desperately want to finish your cat-robots-in-space novel, and that’s fine. But it’s also okay not to know what you want to write. That’s normal.
Pro-tip:
Where do you head first in a bookstore?
Imagine it’s a rainy afternoon, and you have nothing to do for an hour before your friend arrives for your coffee date. No one’s with you. (No one will judge what section you head to first.)
You’ve never been to this particular bookstore before, and you do the quick wander — just taking in the store, letting your eye fall on the new releases, maybe caressing a pile of brightly-colored cookbooks. You inhale deeply, taking in the scent of furfural and lignin, the almond- and vanilla-scented chemical compounds created by paper breaking down. It takes a minute to adjust to being surrounded by all these words. It’s heady, almost dizzying.
But then your brain comes back online with a thunk.
Where’s the romance section?
or
Where do they keep memoir in this place?
What does your brain ask your body to take it after it recovers from the joy of entering the bookshop?
That’s your reality check.
Let your gut guide you.
Maybe all you read for fun are thrillers, but you’d be embarrassed in front of your more fancy-pancy-dancy friends to admit you’re writing one, so you’ve been trying to write something Good and Important.
Screw that.
We write what we love.
Writing what we love is what makes our writing good and important.
Don’t write literary fiction because that’s what you’re “supposed” to do. Write it only if you adore it, truly and madly. Please.
Don’t write a romance because you’ve heard they make good money. Write it because that’s what your Kindle is full of.
Don’t write a cozy mystery because your mom has told you a million times she wants to read yours. Do write it because you can’t get enough of cozies, because you blow through two every weekend.
I get it if you’re torn, if you want to write your cancer memoir and the space opera you’ve been dreaming about for years. That’s a normal feeling. How can you pick the right one?
Here’s the answer:
There is no right book for you to write right now.
Also, there is no wrong book for you write right now.
You can’t screw this up.
(The only way you can blow this is not to pick something. The only wrong thing is to not write. That’s the only failure possible.)
Granted, by picking one book in one genre, you are necessarily shutting the door on the trillions of books you could write. That’s the way it works. But once you make that almost arbitrary choice, once that book is written, you clear the space to make a new choice, to write something different.
But you have to make a choice.
So: what kind of book are you writing?
Fabulous.
That’s the right answer.
Now, work on it, please. Don’t let another day go by without putting in 5 minutes of work on it. You owe it to yourself (and the readers you’ll change with your words).
love and extra erasers,
Rachael
PS - Class registration is open for 11 more days! I won’t be teaching again until mid-2025, so jump in if you’re interested! There are still a couple of slots left in Revision and a few more in 90 Days to Done, and I’d love to have you, no matter where you are in your journey.
😭 I love this quote from former student Kristin S. says: "I'm a bona-fide writing class junkie but Rachael Herron's classes stand head-and-shoulders above the rest. Rachael manages to be all things at once - the best writing coach you'll ever have, an ace editor, a writing craft guru, an expert on how the book market works, and an unabashed cheerleader of each person's work. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I might have given up my writing if I hadn't found Rachael's classes."
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You’re a real writer. Period. ❤️
Hi, I am really interested in taking this course. My only concern is timing.. I live in Europe so would it be possible for me to join?