Don't let popular book genres hold you hostage

 

I didn't find my niche right away and even though I've mostly figured it out, I'm still tempted to stray away. My first short story was an interview style biography about a bestselling author who gave up on her career to be a stay at home wife and mother to her 6 children, only for the husband to be a scumbag. It's not a great book, but I enjoyed writing as the interviewer and interviewee. Initially I was like, "this is my niche, I want to write interview style books and make them the focus in my writing career". Like I said, the book's not great, but I loved writing it regardless. I was all geared up to start coming up with new characters and ready to begin plotting stories, then I opened up google. I was searching up how likely it was for me to succeed as a writer and what books were best to write. Through every Google search I kept seeing that Romance novels were always in high demand and that a romance book is more likely to be read than any other. Which might just be true, but I had no interest in writing some romance novel. I had no interest in it and I felt like the book would be nothing but the same story that had already been written 100 times in just that year alone. The last thing I wanted was to write a book because it was a trending genre, that might sell far more than anything else. But I wasn't seeing a bunch of popular interview style biographies and I was way too focused on writing a trending book. I was scaring the hell out of myself with every Google search and I ultimately convinced myself that success couldn't be found writing books I loved. Making the most noise and money was crowding my mind. So I tried my hand at a murder mystery, I enjoyed writing it and for a second book it was some good work. Still I didn't want to be a mystery writer, so I moved onto romance novels and wrote like 20 different romance stories that I still haven't managed to finish. I kept getting stuck and my mind wandered elsewhere, I wanted to get better at writing the interview style biographies I enjoyed. So after failing a few more times, I said fuck it and wrote books that I wanted to read. My niche isn't making me really any money at all and I don't make any noise with my books, but I love them. My characters make me happy and I'm always eager to write my next interview. My point today is stop being so damn stuck on numbers and that's more me talking to myself. Just write a book that you love, fail and then try your hand at it again. Maybe fail some more, but enjoy yourself while you do it and the failure will end up feeling like a success anyway. This is a " I had something to say and nobody to talk to" post. But I do hope that it still helps whomever might be in need. Thank you for reading this ramble session, I do very much appreciate it.