Change: Is it a good or a bad thing for authors?

Hi all,

Since my last post was about the holiday season, I thought I would follow it with thoughts derived from the holiday that follows Christmas. Yep, it's the good ol' new year. This year it will be 2008 and for someone growing up in the ‘70s, it’s amazing that we’ll see the year of 2010 very, very soon.

And so the new year provides us all, writers and non writers alike to look back at the past year and see both how far we’ve come and how far we’ve yet left to go. The new year is a time to assess past goals and make new ones for the upcoming year. But, this time is also a time when we think about change. How much we have changed. And how little.

As writers, we’d like to think that we’ve ‘grown’ in our writing, that is, that we’ve been able to show more complexity in our work. But since many of our readers fell in love with our first novel, is this change indeed a good thing?

Though one’s writing should develop more depth as one becomes hopefully, more adept at writing novels, I think that one should not lose sight of what the readers enjoyed about one’s first novel. Therefore, in order to ‘recapture’ what your readers enjoy about your work, I think you should reread yourself from time to time.

Now, I’m not saying that every week you should pull your book(s) off of your bookshelf and read yourself with that much repetition. However, though, I do feel that unless you read yourself semi-regularly (maybe a few chapters every month or so), you might eventually move so far away from your original inner voice that you will be distancing yourself from your readers.

As I’ve said previously in this blog entry, everyone ‘changes’/grows/develops every year. And yes, that is a good thing. However, keeping one’s inner voice consistent is important, especially if you’re doing a book series and wanting to keep your original fans interested in your current work. By not rereading your own work, you may find that you have drifted too far from your original voice and so, perhaps, be writing ‘better’ than you’ve written, but your new books will not match the old ones. In other words, your voice won’t ‘sound’ the same to your old fans. This is not a good thing since your old fans may not find that they enjoy your new/improved writer's voice and so, may move on to other authors/other books.

I guess the ‘trick’ of it all then, is to be able to reread one’s work (again, not rereading an entire novel but perhaps a chapter or two a month) and try to remember what it was that readers enjoyed about your universe enough to purchase your work. I think that if the writer keeps doing this from time to time, they then, can move forward in a sense and keep developing as a writer. You might lose a piece of your original ‘voice’ (original voice may shift/change a bit over time) but you will still keep the essence of what it is that your fans enjoy about your universe/characters in tact.

Before I was a writer, I was an avid reader in the romance genre, particularly in the vampire romance genre. I have many favorite authors and the most wonderful thing for me as a reader is to be able to purchase their new novel and on beginning to read them, ‘feel’ their voice talking to me as I read. It’s comforting as a reader (some authors I’ve been reading over 20 years) to be able to reconnect in a sense with the author’s inner voice and the knowing that they’ve kept the original magic of their first book going over the entire series (and is present in their new book).

So, in summation, I’d say that change is good but as a writer, one should be aware of one's changing over time. I wouldn’t say not to change your ‘voice’ but I’d say that if you’re working on making each succeeding novel ‘better’ understand and try to keep the essence of what made your faithful readers/fans first want to buy and read your work in the first place. Again, I believe that a writer can achieve these two distinct and opposing sounding goals (growing as a writer while trying to keep your original voice the same) by rereading themselves occasionally. Only by revisiting one’s old work can one be able to see the past and be able to plan and build for the future.

Take care all,
Chris

PS--Next up: 19th Century French characters named Bob or why one should choose appropriate names for your characters.