Sorry to bring brevity to such an interesting thread but I can't resist...

It was drilled into me at university, by my German professor, to NEVER EVER in English send a preposition to the end of a sentence:

In Stargate SG-1 (yes, I know, I'm sorry) there's an episode where Richard Dean Anderson is being tortured and is on the floor recovering from a nasty electrocution device. As he's lying there the bad guy says something like "You have no idea what evil I'm capable of." Anderson looks up at him and says "You bastard! You ended a sentence with a preposition!" then passes out.

Silly, I know, but it made me laugh.

Jon

Wow. And to think those scripts get published...

I agree with Becca about the passion and Emma about the quality. It is too negative to imagine your book won't be successful unless it follows a market trend. I always thought the idea was to make something so good it created it's own trend, but sadly there are those writers who simply work to follow the latest leader.

JB

If you ask a publisher or agent what's selling, they can only tell you... well, what's selling. What they can't tell you is what will sell two years from now when your book's finished, and believe me, they'd love to if they could.

Plus, what's speculative industry chit-chat to them is dangerously likely to shape (or wreck) a couple of years of a writer's life, which is why it's best taken with a pinch of salt. When this sort of subject comes up, I'm always reminded of Howard's End. Leonard Bast leaves his job because - oh dear, I'm going to say Anthony Hopkins because I can't remember the character's name, rich banker, anyway - anyway, he, says that Leonard's bank's doing badly. It's a market blip to him, but Leonard never gets a job again.

Emma

Yes Emma, none of us can tell the future, I concur. (Don't think I've used that word in a sentence before).

I think the important thing is to just keep doing what you're doing, and what you feel passionate about. Not to focus too much on the naysayers and the sour-grapers or what the papers say about market trends. Ignore the bestseller lists, turn down the noise and the interference, and just continue to write from the heart.

I still believe that is the only way to go about things and have any hope of success.

JB

Yep! And to semi-quote Jon, otherwise you have 'no idea of what good writing you're capable of.'
Becca.

otherwise you have 'no idea of what good writing you're capable of.'

In the end, that's the point, isn't it? It's like people who spend their entire lives trying to please someone else; in the end they can't tell what they need and want for themselves, let alone get it.

Having said that, limitations can be extremely liberating, whether it's playing with the conventions of a genre, or writing a novel without the letter E. It's setting out to write something that fits a perceived market that's an expense of spirit and a waste of shame. Especially when it's only 'perceived'. Aspiring writers - unless their day job is with BookScan - are not even well placed to judge whether it's real.

Emma

Somebody's probably mentioned this on this thread already but I don't have time to read all the posts at the mo.

Try 'The Elements of Style' by 'Strunk & White' I think I heard it mentioned in King's 'On Writing'. It really is invaluable for this type of question. It somehow manages to make everything perfectly clear

From the little I know of it, it sounds as if it would be impossible to mention The Elements of Style too often.

Emma