Know. Your. Market.

Just came from a Better Site Than This One, and there was a discussion going on about the market. Not THE market, YOUR market, as in, "You have to know your market."

Study your readership, they say, so you can provide the kind of writing they're used to, pace-wise, character-wise, plot-wise. Give your audience the genre it wants.

This seems backwards to me. "My" readers are people who read my book. They're not part of my audience before they've read it, are they? And if they like it, then isn't it fair to assume they like my pacing, my characters, my plots? The question isn't whether I know what they want, but whether they like what I've got.

Several people in the industry have advised me to pick a genre and write for it. Failing that, write something first and then be prepared to classify it.

Not. My. Job. I write it, I don't categorize it. If you sent it to me at the library, I would classify it as fiction and shelve it alphabetically by author. Which would put me somewhere between Don DeLillo and Charles Dickens. Not a bad place to be.

I've met members of my audience, and it's hard to see them as a market. They're readers, is what they are, and God bless them, every one.

Bigger Better Faster

Tonight I'm drinking champagne to celebrate the arrival of a new computer. May not seem like a big deal to you, but hey, I wasn't even online a week ago. Now I'm looking at a SLICKASS 22 inch widescreen monitor, thanks to Jim DeLois, who set me up with a system that's faster than a speeding bullet. "No one's ever complained that their computer was too fast," he says, and he's probably right.

This is a huge upgrade from my former computer, which was a library-used model. I paid 25 bucks for the hardware and the operating system, and I loaded a word program on it and not much else. Not sure it could have handled more than that. The poor thing made such awful grinding and screeching noises every time I saved something to the disk drive, I found myself apologizing to it.

It's gone to a happier place now. Jim is using it to set up a server. Old computers are the arena in which he pits one virus against another and watches them fight to the death in true gladiator fashion. You think it's fun being me? Imagine being Jim.

Vicarious Living

There's been a growing trend in recent years, and living vicariously through Patti has become a common phenomenon. Even I'm doing it.

It's kind of fun. I have a great job at the library, in the audiovisual department. I miss the river of books that used to flow past me at the circulation desk, but here's the payoff: I buy the movies. Fun? Are you kidding? Best. Job. Ever.

The other thing that's fun about being me is that I've recently entered the magical world of authorship, where people publish your books, and other people buy them and ask you to sign them. I'm at a very comfortable level of celebrity--I get recognized standing in line at the movies, but so far I've had no trouble with the papparazzi.

The best part is that at the end of the day, I come home to my little apartment, which is mine-mine-mine and to which no one else has a key, and nobody comes in unless I invite them. Which I sometimes do. And that's fun, too.