Know Your Boss When Writing for Money
Readers reign supreme and you cannot tell them they’re wrong
In an open discussion about writing that I attended, a contentious point remained rooted in my mind.
A resource speaker said, in essence, that writers should sometimes deviate from what the readers expect to read. Readers, he stated, could get tired of reading, for example, funny stories.
He added that readers would not mind when a tearjerker of a story is included in a short-story magazine.
I was still new in the writing profession, but what the speaker said lingered in my mind. I did not quite buy the idea that he suggested.
It wasn’t a puzzle where the speaker was coming from. He was recommending the inclusion of stories imbued with social issues. He was a literary writer and was, at the time, a dean at a well-respected university.
He was invited in the open discussion, not in his capacity as literary writer or communications dean but as a writer for commercial publications.
I must add that he used a pen name when writing for magazines and later, for local romance novels. Must I drop a hint that he wasn’t proud to be linked to non-literary writings?
