Writing Advice Examined: Should you write the book of your heart?

When I planned to write this post, I didn’t even realize that it would fall so close to Valentine’s Day! The reason it kept coming to mind had less to do with the calendar and more to do with my copy of the children’s book Arthur Writes A Story that sits on my office shelf.

I had never read Arthur books until McKenna started elementary school and brought them home from the library. When she pulled Arthur Writes A Story from her backpack and read it to me, I grew teary. And then bought a copy for my self.

Here’s a brief summary of the story. Arthur is given a class assignment to write a story. Any kind of story. Arthur knows exactly what he wants to write about—when he got his puppy. 

He writes his story, and then he reads it to his little sister. DW declares that it’s boring and that if she were writing a book, she would write about getting an elephant.

Feeling insecure, Arthur rewrites his story. The next day at school, he shows it to a friend and asks if he likes the part about the elephant puppies. His friend says it was okay, but that he’s chosen to write about outer space.

Arthur rewrites his story to be about elephants in outer space.

He talks to another friend. This friend is focused on writing a well-research, scientifically accurate story. This leads to another revision. We now have elephants in outer space and Arthur uses all scientific names for them.

Another friend is putting jokes in her story. Arthur revises.

Another kid is writing her story as a song. Arthur revises. He even adds a dance.

When the assignment is due and Arthur shares his story song complete with dance in front of the class, everyone gives him a befuddled look. The kids push him on why he wrote it and Arthur shares that originally he wrote about how he got his puppy. They ask if he’ll tell that story. Arthur then tells them the original story—the one he started off trying to tell—with the enthusiasm that we naturally have when we’re sharing a story we care about. His classmates enjoy it more than the story he wrote trying to please everyone else. The end.

McKenna thought I was a bit weird to cry at Arthur Writes A Story, but the story resonated. I was in the midst of edits on my first historical YA novel—a book that was galaxies away from my comfort zone—and I was getting blasted from all directions with advice. Some had even advised against writing it, but I had anyway.

I wrote it because it was a story idea I loved, that I felt I had to write. Often writers describe stories like this as books of the heart.

Writers like to say you should write the book of your heart. Forget the market! Telling your story is all that matters! But is this good advice?

Maybe. Quoting my brilliant friend, Shannon Dittemore, “What kind of writer do you want to be?”

Do you care more about making money or about making art? In a perfect world, you get to do both. But if you had to pick, which is it? Either answer is fine, so long as it’s honest.

Because our blog is for young writers, and since most young writers are more about art than about money, and since I don’t really know much about making tons of money with writing, I’ll talk to those who answer, “making art.”

Just like the plotter or pantser question, most published writers I know are hybrids, including me. I want to write books I love and care about. I also want them to be published, and I enjoy being paid for my time.

That’s why when I approach a new story idea, I always start with what story I want to tell—Jill wrote a lovely article on premise last week—and then I think about if I can make it an idea that will sell.

My story ideas tend to fall into three categories:

1. That sounds fun, but it would be tough to sell for reason x, y, and z.
2. I think that’s a really marketable premise… but I don’t know that I’m excited enough to write it.
3. I love this idea. And I think if I tweak this and this, I could sell it.

I’ve written quite a few of #1. Wow, I had fun with those. They will probably sit on my hard drive for the next 10 or so years.

I’ve written two in the #2 category. One of them, the trend swung the other way, so it’s now become completely unsellable. The other I could sell. Maybe it would even do pretty well. But I just don’t care enough to do the hard work.

But #3 is always the target I’m aiming for these days. Stories that fall in the purple space:

“Purple stories” land in the beautiful overlap of stories I love to write and stories readers love to buy.

Here’s an example of what writing purple looks like in real life. When I first started writing YA, one of the problems I had was my main character’s age. In the first draft of the book that became Me, Just Different, Skylar was in 8th grade. That’s a great age for a middle grade story, but my book was YA in its maturity level.

When I realized this at a writer’s conference, I could’ve dug in my heels. I could’ve said, “No, this is the book of my heart, and in my heart Skylar is in 8th grade.” But I felt Skylar’s age was a small thing. It was a change that would make my book easier to sell, but I would still be telling the story I wanted.

Maybe you don’t want to write purple. Maybe you want your stories to stay firmly in the red. If you get published, fine. If not, that’s fine too, but you don’t want to change your story for anybody. Totally fine!

At every writers conference I’ve attended, there have been writers who feel that way … but also would really like their book to be published. So can I throw out a few words of caution for those of you who only care about writing the book of your heart but also want to find an audience?

Don’t get angry at publishers for not publishing your book: If you write a book just for you, it’s unfair to get all annoyed at publishers for not seeing the value in it. Publishing is a business. If you want a publisher to buy your book, you have to show them that it’s a good investment. The same is true for if you self-publish. Why should a reader plop down their money to read the book of your heart? If your primary goal was to make art, then you have to rest in the fact that you did that, and any money you make is just a nice perk.

Also, don’t shut out constructive critics: Some writers like to point to The Help by Kathryn Stockett as a writer who wrote the book of her heart and had such a passion for it that the book eventually sold and was a crazy bestseller.

What writers tend to overlook when they pull out that story is how many revisions the author did. When she received rejections and feedback, she rewrote. Over and over she did this. And that book is a beautiful work of art, not despite her incorporating that feedback, but because of it.

Good critique partners and editors don’t want to strip away what makes your book great. Their job is to make sure your vision of the story is being transmitted clearly to the reader.