A Writer and the "Right" Way

In his Monday post, Dean Wesley Smith talks about the wrong direction for a writer. Like many of his posts, this one hit home.

Dean sees the Critical Voice as one with the sole objective of stopping the Creative Voice from having fun. The Creative Voice is the little child in each writer who only wants to tell stories. Critical Voice is the adult who keeps trying to say what the child is writing isn't good or isn't up to some vague notion of what will sell. Worse, we might write ourselves into a corner and, not knowing how to get out of it, might trash thousands of words as we rewrite ourselves back onto the "right" road. Or, most recently for me, wondering whether or not to publish a story that doesn't quite match what I've published to date.

Boy have I used that excuse more than once. And it has worked more than once. But like Dean wrote in his piece, how do we writers know we've gone in a wrong direction?

We don't. We have no clue what or how a reader will react to anything we've written. I recently had an experience like that.

When I posted the first chapter of a short story titled "Amber Alert" to my newsletter, I got some feedback. It was a different type of story, a modern crime story with a completely different vibe than the westerns or historical mysteries I usually write. I was actually a tad worried it wouldn't be greeted well. Granted, it wasn't going to stop me from publishing it, but I figured it might be a story that doesn't resonate.

Yet some folks really dug it. And they took the time to send me an email telling me so.

Looks like I was wrong. Why? Because a writer's job is to write stories. Promote those stories and get them out to readers. After that, it's out of a writer's hands. Then, and most crucially, write the next story.