Don’t know if I’ve said this before but the current WIP is a complete departure from the other stuff I’ve done in the past. It’s (a) set in college, (b) 99% of the characters are Flips, and (c) it’s a coming-of-age story.
I’ve gone through all three. I’ve been to college, I’m a Flip myself, and I’ve come of age. If writers are supposed to “write what we know,” then baby, I’m gold.
So why, of all the WIPs I’ve worked on, does this make me shake in my shoes the most?
Maybe it’s because if I write about secret agents, I can almost guarantee that a majority of my readers won’t be secret agents. So in theory, a majority of my readers won’t know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. I can make stuff up. Of course it has to be believable and credible and backed up by research yadda yadda…but c’mon. I’m betting that a majority of the readers of the Bourne novels have never taken a Kali class before. See? You didn’t even know that Kali is the main martial art that Bourne practices, did you?
But if I write about a Filipino-American college girl and her coming-of-age story, chances are that my target market will be Filipino-American college girls who are either (a) coming of age, (b) or have come of age already. And so they’re going to KNOW the shit I’m writing about. And so not only does it have to be believable, it also has to be TRUE. In short, I can’t make shit up.
Of course there’s MY truth and THEIR truth. By “my” truth, I mean my own personal experiences. After all, the best defense against someone accusing you of inaccuracy is to say, “It happened to me.” So that’s why I’m mining my own personal experiences for this particular story. And it’s painful. And hard. One scene in particular had me in tears after I wrote it. My sister doesn’t even want to hear about it, that’s how much pain in dredges up. I don’t think she’s going to read this story.
Anyway, I’m at the 80-page mark of this story. Is it too niche? Do books about college life sell? The prognosis, according to my agent, looks slim. And yet I’m going to write it because I *need* to. The story is inside me, bursting to be told. And then I’ll probably tuck it away in a memory stick never to be seen again. Ah, such is the life of a writer…
We don’t know. Sometimes agents say one thing and then once the material is published, it defies what they all say.
If you really want to write it because it comes from your heart, then go on because the satisfaction is not coming from the stats anyway…it’s coming from knowing that what your heart goes has become real .
By: Bingkee on August 1, 2008
at 5:47 pm
Exactly. I’ve basically ignored her advice on this manuscript and been writing my little heart out. She might be right. No one might want to read about a Filipino-American college student coming-of-age story. But I comfort myself with three words.
Joy.
Luck.
Club.
By: karmelajohnson on August 1, 2008
at 7:04 pm