What do you want to write?

Guest blogger, Susanne Dunlap

I’m beginning to think of that question as a luxury for either the unpublished writer who is still finding her way to her voice, or the superstar writer who can pretty much take charge of her own career and write whatever the heck she wants.

Let me backtrack a little: I can’t put the hard work, soul-searching and sheer hours into writing something that’s really not what I want to write. Every book I’ve written, whether it has ended up being published or not, has been something I’ve felt passionate about.

That said, as I am becoming more and more of a career writer (I quit my dreadful day job three months ago and haven’t looked back), the question of the market and how much a writer should consider it when planning projects, has become much more real to me.

I write historical fiction for adults and young adults. What’s more, at least to start with, my books were about musical subjects, because that’s my background. I spent a good chunk of my adult life in graduate school getting a PhD in Music History, and I discovered so many incredible stories, so much rich material, that if I mined it forever I would never exhaust it.

But it’s not a great time out there for mid-list writers like me. I made a career shift a few years ago when my agent suggested I write a young adult novel, since my adult novels tended to have heroines on the brink of adulthood going through something that gets them to the next stage of their lives. I thought about it, terrified at first that I wouldn’t be able to appeal to younger readers, and discovered something buried in me that reveled in reaching back to explore the emotions and thoughts of a teen. After the first YA novel, I was hooked.

I’d left the ending of that novel, The Musician’s Daughter, up in the air a bit to allow for a sequel, which I already had formed in my mind. I wrote it and submitted it to my publisher as the option book. To my complete astonishment, they didn’t buy it. They wanted another book from me, but weren’t sure about marketing a sequel.

I’m a pretty resilient person, and I soon thought of another subject that fascinated me, but it really took me away from music for the first time. Anastasia’s Secret was a rewarding exploration for me, and it opened me up to more possibilities. In the YA world, maybe I didn’t have to stick closely to music history, which was my “brand differentiator” in the adult world. Hmmmm.

I’m pleased with where my YA novels have taken me so far. The Musician’s Daughter has been nominated for several awards, something I never expected. But the huge success of writers like Suzanne Collins, Stephenie Meyer, or Shannon Hale is still only a pipe dream for me.

And that makes me think. Are readers simply not as interested in the things I want to write? I could no more write dystopian fantasy than fly to the moon. I admire those writers immensely, but I’ll never write the way they do. But I would be kidding myself if I claimed not to wish for more success, more readers, for my stories. I find myself reading other writers like an archeologist, digging into the prose to try to figure out what it is that has ignited so many imaginations, and wondering if I could do that with my own preferred subject matter.

I haven’t found the answer yet. But I’m up for just about any challenge. I like to think that each book I’ve written has helped me grow as a writer. And you know what? It’s actually kind of exhilarating to discover that my career as a novelist doesn’t have to be tied to my expertise in music history.

So I’ll end this blog post with a secret: In addition to the book I’m under contract to write for my wonderful publisher, Bloomsbury USA Children’s, I’m working on something pretty frighteningly different. I don’t know yet if it will work, or if it will ever be published, but just doing it has reminded me that the only restrictions on our creativity are the ones we put on it ourselves.

What do I want to write? I want to write something that will push me beyond the limits I thought I had into a new world, a new audience, and new insight about myself. That’s the real joy of writing: what it teaches you about your own capabilities. I feel like a marathon runner of words. An Olympic gymnast of plot. A major-league baseball player of character development.

I’m stoked.

Susanne Dunlap has published two adult historical novels, Emilie’s Voice and Liszt’s Kiss, and two young adult novels, The Musician’s Daughter and Anastasia’s Secret. Her next book, In the Shadow of the Lamp, will be published by Bloomsbury USA Children’s in April, 2011. Susanne lives in Brooklyn, is the proud mother of two adult daughters, a doting grandmother, practically lives for her dog Betty, and loves to ride her bicycle.

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