Why I don’t write to sell

Yes, I dream of being a published author someday. But that can’t be my north star anymore.

In 2018, I came up with an idea for a novel. It was a contemporary murder mystery, and I had a one-line pitch for it that I was confident agents and publishers would like. I dove into it headfirst, excited to have an idea that not only jibed with the latest bestseller charts, but also dovetailed nicely with my academic and professional background.

As I wrote, I lost interest in the idea. All of my characters felt flat but one, and I was struggling to find places for the social commentary I wanted to squeeze in. I pushed myself to finish the story anyway. I reminded myself of what it might look like to have a novel on a bookstore’s shelf.

In mid-2020, I wrapped up my first draft. I was proud of myself for having finished something. I let the draft sit for a few months, did some editing, then hired a couple beta readers to rip the whole thing to shreds.

And rip it to shreds, they did.

Getting feedback that isn’t 100% positive is difficult for most of us. But after the dust settled and I could look seriously at the work that needed to be done, I felt empty. The idea of spending more time with those characters—and leveraging my experience in a field I was actively trying to escape—exhausted me. I couldn’t muster up a single ounce of excitement for the concept I’d dreamt up two years before; in fact, I actively resented it.

It took 10 months and a lot of soul searching to realize that I’d never cared about writing or publishing that novel. Instead, I’d been focused on writing and publishing a novel—anything that would kickstart my career as an author and allow me to tell people I’d written a real-life book that they could buy.

Gross! That’s not what writing is to me. Writing is an escape, an outlet, a community-builder. It’s a medium through which I share thoughts and ideas I’d struggle to communicate otherwise. It’s my way of reaching out to others and gently taking their hand, or sometimes offering that hand to past versions of myself. So why on Earth was I focusing all of my writerly energy on creating something salable?

Capitalism tells us that worth is best conveyed via monetary value. If people aren’t actively spending their money on a thing, that thing can’t possibly be very important. In the creative realm, this means the work that sells must be more inspiring, fulfilling, or useful than the work that doesn’t sell or is given away for free. Publishing a book that costs money, then, is more commendable than writing stories that stay on your hard drive forever, maintaining a blog, or swapping a poetry journal back and forth with your best friend.

I learned in 2020 that this is a load of bullshit.

I want my craft to be something I’d do even in the dark. I want the words I write to fill my soul before they have a chance to fill anyone else’s. I want my stories to take me places and teach me things more than I want them to earn a few bucks in royalties or make a bestseller list.

Just as much, I don’t want agents or publishers or editors or marketers or BookTok (vom) to tell me when my work is or isn’t valuable. If I enjoy writing something, grow via the creative process, or achieve interpersonal connection through what I’ve made, that piece of writing inherently holds value, regardless of whether it earns me a publishing deal.

I realize that this sounds a bit extreme. To be clear, I’ve spent my whole life dreaming of becoming a published author, and I still hope I achieve that within my lifetime. But that can’t be my north star anymore. I’m tired of salability and marketability and likability (as conveyed via the exchange of money) taking the place of imagination and creative fulfillment in my head when I sit down to write.

Plus, what sells is a constantly-moving target. What’s “in these days” is unlikely to still be trendy by the time I’ve written, cleaned up, found representation for, and published a piece of work. Vampires had their moment, as did social media fiction and “Instagram poetry.” Edgy memoirs and Salley Rooney-style slices of life that lack quotation marks for some inexplicable reason are bound to fade into the background at some point, too. That’s just how art works.

Even if I did manage to squeeze my work into a particular genre’s short super-salable window, there’d be no guarantee that it would sell well. (Think of all the vampire novels that didn’t take off.) And maybe that’s a good thing. Can you imagine if you weren’t really into a particular style or genre, got popular for that style or genre, and then found yourself with a reputation that didn’t suit your real ambitions? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with genre-hopping, but someone who’s hyper-focused on salability would likely find that scenario incredibly painful.

Ultimately, the idea of writing primarily for purposes that aren’t money-oriented is a theme I’ll touch on frequently here. It guides a lot of my artistic philosophy, efforts, and worldview, and I’ve seen it do the same for other creatives. There appears to be a point at which many of us realize salability simply can’t call the shots every time.

But for now, I leave you with this: There is an audience for everything and everyone. If you’re worried that putting salability on the back burner will prevent people from finding and appreciating your work, know that that isn’t the case. E.L. James, Neil Breen, and 100 gecs have somehow amassed cult followings by making their own weird art, and you can, too. You might as well find yours doing something you actually enjoy.

What’s been inspiring me lately:

✰ This Tumblr post full of photos people took when they suddenly felt that life (and all of its challenges) were worthwhile.

✰ This excerpt from an advice column on The Cut:

✰ Coyote Corner, a funky little gift shop in Joshua Tree. The novella I’m writing features a gift shop very similar to it, so I think about this little place all. the. time.

Photo by Evan Willingham.