Andie asked Lois McMaster Bujold:

Hello, I have a writing question about finding that balance between writing for yourself (e.g., the story you yourself would like to read); and considering or taking feedback about "what the public would want." Is there a creative vs. commercial dilemma? Or is it really more that THIS is the story that feels right, maybe people will like it, but if not, oh well. Just curious about how, or if, you balance these? TY

Lois McMaster Bujold
Art vs. Commerce is one of those balances that have varied over the years. It was my good luck that early in my career the stories I had a taste for, and those people would buy, had an identifiable overlap, so "finding my audience" wasn't insurmountable. What I found most pressing back then wasn't content, but the need for speed of production in pro publishing. Publishers wanted reliable writers who would deliver on time and regularly; a book a year or more.

By mid-career, I was more-or-less trusting my audience. From whom a writer had much LESS feedback at that time, therefore marginally less crazy-making. (Because reader response, over any very wide range of persons, is a contradictory cacophony. I was fortunate to learn this early on even without the internet.) And my editors were trusting both me and and their customers, so, while I certainly wanted to write things my publishers could sell, most of my pressure was internal and speed-related.

Pat Wrede, as usual, had a good line for it: if you write something you don't like thinking it's "for the market", and it doesn't sell, you will have wasted your time utterly; and it's worse if it does, because then people will just want more of what you didn't want to write in the first place.

Post-career, none of that applies anymore. I need only write what I like (not that I could ever do anything else) and sales, though nice, are mainly a way of keeping score. What's much harder now is finding any story idea that I like well enough to write at all, and that's enough different from the ever-larger pile of things I wrote before that I bore neither myself (critical) nor my readers.

Ta, L.

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