What it takes to Survive Decades in this Business!

Michael's column in October reminded me of how long we'd both been in the business, and what it takes to stay here and be continually published.

In a word:  

Versatility

As Michael pointed out, we are seeing a time of catastrophic change in the writers' market.  Magazines and publishing houses are closing shop.  Entire subgenres are disappearing from the shelves.

I saw a version of this happen in the 90s, when I was first teaching genre fiction writing.  The romance market was in crisis.  Why?  Because even in a romance book, you need conflict.  You need a reason why the two leads can't get together.  It used to be we had class, money, religion, race, and all those lovely things to keep people apart.  Things they would have to overcome to be together.

Now, if you look at cosmopolitan Toronto (7 million+) for instance, those conflicts seem rather quaint nowadays.  None of the young adults in my class would buy such reasons for not getting together.  In fact, when I challenged my last class to come up with a realistic reason why a young Toronto man and woman (or same sex) couldn't get together, a single (older) man came up with this glorious reason:  the traffic!

Ever wonder about those Vampires? 

Humour aside (as if I can ever do that) the writers of romance had to come up with a way to introduce new conflict into their 70,000 word romance novels.  And guess what happened?  The vampire age was born!  Now, *there's* conflict.  Young lady falls for a gorgeous young something she thinks is a man, but is actually a vampire, and he has to control himself to keep from killing her.  You think I kid?  Vampires were the perfect conflict. Ditto Werewolves and Zombies.

And many romance writers became versatile (that word again) writers of Romantasy.  (romance combined with fantasy - very hot right now.)  They followed the market.

Another example?

In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down.  And with it, the spy novels that were in production at the time.  My agent told me that publishers shelved books that were on the production line, because Russian and East Berlin spies were 'so passe'.  

So what did those writers of spy novels do?  They became versatile!  And wrote micro-thrillers.

Myself?  I started by writing short stories.  Some magazines paid me as much as $2000 a story in the 90s.  (or what the young ones are now calling, 'the late 1900s' - gaK)  Ten to fifteen years after that, I was lucky to get an average of $200 a story.

So what did I do, to make money?  I started writing novels.

It was hard for me.  I had to rework the way I came up with plots.  Since I started in the biz as a humour writer, it seemed easiest for me to write comic capers.  I did that for 10 years.

And then a personal tragedy (death of my husband) took me to a very dark place.  I lost my comedy chops for a while, and had to change subgenre.  Now I write historical golden age mystery (although with some humour).

I had to be versatile, in order to still be able to write.

I want to go back to all those writing students I taught - over 2000, through the years, and put this up on the board.

"The key to writing success over the decades?  The ability to be VERSATILE."

So I add to my three things necessary to become a writer. It's now four:

Talent, Craft, Passion and Versatility! 

 

Melodie Campbell writes a bunch of stuff, from the shores of Lake Ontario.