Social media is full of publishing professionals telling aspiring writers not to write to trends.  Which can be a frustrating Catch-22 if you’re an unpublished writer in the query trenches. On one hand, they keep saying they want more of this or that popular thing—and then they go and tell you not to write to trends! So which is it?
Truth is, there are lots of reasons not to write to trends. Including the obvious ones: for example, it takes a book up to three years to be published, and in that time, the trend might end. Womp-womp. But writing to trends is also not that great for you as a writer—as I learned at my own expense.
When I first set out on the journey to traditional publication, a little over five years ago, I did everything you’re supposed to do. I studied craft, I researched, I read extensively. I focused my reading on the category and subgenre I decided to write in. I picked up the most successful books and analyzed them with (what I thought was) a critical eye. All I had to do was figure out the formula behind their success and recreate it with a personal touch. That’s what all the articles on writing tell you to do… right?
Unfortunately, the stories I produced to fit the “formula” never seemed to go anywhere. Either I got bored with them by chapter five, or, if I did complete them, they collected rejections. Maybe because the agents I queried, and even the beta readers I used, could detect the lack of soul. Sadly, no creative writing manual can teach you how to fake that.
After a while, I realized I wasn’t enjoying reading as much as I used to, and writing has become joyless work, not to mention a major source of stress. The activity that once brought me so much happiness and helped me escape from the real world had now become a burden. That’s when I knew things had to change.
I did a lot of soul-searching—and a lot of deleting stuff from my hard drive, which was even less fun than the soul-searching. I realized, in the end, that I was trying to write to a trend, and I had to stop.
Letting go of all that—the thrill of the chase, of feverishly writing what you think might be the Next Big Thing, and all the big hopes that come with it—was tough. But I finally understood why you shouldn’t try to shoehorn your writing into a trend. My chosen genre started to feel confining and ultimately unsatisfying—not because there was anything wrong with it, but because it didn’t suit the stories I wanted to write.
I learned to accept the fact that my stories weren’t meant to fit any one mold. And so what? Maybe I didn’t want to be the next So-and-so—I wanted to be the first, well, me. I finally felt like I was writing for the right reasons, and being true to the stories I was telling.
And I think some of that realness trickled down into my prose, because for the first time, I started to get genuinely positive reactions.
***
My most memorable meeting with a writer was, without a doubt, Gillian Flynn! I’ve been a fan for ages—she’s the kind of rebel-writer I aspire to be, and proof that you can be successful without following trends. At Thrillerfest 2016, I finally got to meet her at a book signing, for all of 10 seconds. And of course, I was so star-struck that I completely froze! So, on the off-chance you ever see this, Gillian Flynn, I’m really not as big a dork as I come across.

​

Olivia Shaw has been missing since last Tuesday. She was last seen outside the entrance of her elementary school in Hunts Point wearing a white spring jacket, blue jeans, and pink boots.

I force myself to look at the face in the photo, into her slightly smudged features, and I can't bring myself to move. Olivia Shaw could be my mirror image, rewound to thirteen years ago.

If you have any knowledge of Olivia Shaw's whereabouts or any relevant information, please contact...

I've spent a long time peering into the faces of girls on missing posters, wondering which one replaced me in that basement. But they were never quite the right age, the right look, the right circumstances. Until Olivia Shaw, missing for one week tomorrow.

Whoever stole me was never found. But since I was taken, there hasn't been another girl.

And now there is. ​

​Twitter: @girlinthetitle
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GirlInTheTitle/
Instagram: @nina.laurin

​Insufficient Knowledge
Years ago, long before I wrote anything even the most generous editor would call fit to publish, I took a course on American Lit. I was already reading voraciously, and struggling through my non-literary courses, and and trying my hand at stories of my own.
Our professor introduced our unit on poetry with a video interview of Robert Frost. To this day I remember a phrase Frost used—that to write you have to start “on insufficient knowledge.”
That phrase broke down my biggest assumption about successful writers—that they knew.
To this day, writers publicly hype the amount of research they do, the forensic or procedural authorities they consulted—as if this grants their work authenticity.
I don’t know about authenticity, but it seemed to grant them confidence, something my younger self didn’t possess in abundance. Frost was the first writer I heard who hinted that he, too, had felt unprepared for what he was about to undertake.
I finished my second year of college and then quit. Held a bunch of different jobs, most terrible and low-paying. Wrote sporadically and accrued rejection slips.
In my mid-twenties I went back to college, finished my bachelors, and went on to grad school. Around that time I realized if I didn’t put the time in to write a novel, to finish what I started, then I was probably closing the door on that dream. I had to start. Even worse, then I had to finish.
Without really knowing what I was doing, I wrote a novel. I stole time between classes, on the bus, in the library carrels after others had gone home. I finished a book. It was awful, a mess. But it was a complete, finished, awful mess.
Each year I make a goal for myself, and that year my goal went from “write a book” to “write a good book.” Something I’d be proud of, something I’d be comfortable to submit.
Obviously I’m glossing over a few things, like hard work and luck, but my point is, every step was taken with insufficient knowledge—in other words, in faith.
Faith is a weird word to someone who’s not all that religious. Maybe you prefer confidence. Fine by me. Whatever you call it, with writing, ultimately you learn what to do by doing it. Books on writing, classes, critique groups, only take you so far.
When I was working on what became my debut novel, Last of the Independents, I met Ian Rankin at the Vancouver Writers Fest. After his panel I asked him for advice. His answer was, “Remember, Sam, we’ve all been where you are now.”Nothing ever removes doubt, but other writers—every writer—has felt that same doubt. Maybe there’s some comfort to be found in that.

​An ex-cop who navigates by a moral compass stubbornly jammed at true north, Dave Wakeland is a talented private investigator with next to zero business sense. And even though he finds himself with a fancy new office and a corporate-minded partner, he continues to be drawn to cases that are usually impossible to solve and frequently don't pay.

When Wakeland is hired by a terminally ill woman to discover the whereabouts of her adopted child-who disappeared as an adult more than a decade earlier-it seems like just another in a string of poor career decisions. But it turns out this case is worse than usual, even by his standards. With only an anonymous and vaguely worded tip to guide him, Wakeland interviews an imprisoned serial killer who seems to know nothing about the case, but who nonetheless steers him toward Vancouver's terrifying criminal underworld.

And it all goes downhill from there.

Whatever ghosts drive Wakeland, they seem to drive him inexorably toward danger-a journey he's content to take so long as it means finding out what happened to someone the rest of the world seems happy enough to forget. With nothing to protect him but his wit and his empathy for the downtrodden and disenfranchised, Wakeland is on the case.

Check out Sam's website here
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​If you came here because of "Realizing Magical"-- that was the old title. Me and a friend were sitting around talking and he came up with something like "Accelerated Learning Techniques for a Budding Sociopath" and I thought "That would make a great title for a short story collection!" so I changed the title because you can do that on Amazon. There's no story in the collection titled that. I don't know. It's just to sucker you in to reading my stories. That's it. 

I self-publish and it's one of the biggest challenges I've ever had as a writer. 

So if you buy one of my books and see a mistake... or don't like it and are thinking about getting a refund please don't return it. Keep it, so I can keep all the money that you spent. And don't troll. Because I will pull out "the whip" on y'all.
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​Jackson and Olivia Porter's daughter Ava is thrown overboard during a squall on Puget Sound. In a flash of lightning Livy sees someone on a nearby boat pull something from the water. No one comes forward with their child nor do they recover a body, yet Livy clings to the belief their daughter was rescued. Jackson believes his wife is mentally unstable and falls into dysfunctions of his own. Their marriage is torn apart and Livy flees to the Oregon Coast, where she encounters a legendary ghost-child in the lighthouse manned by her father. She begins to wonder if Jackson is right about her mental instability as she bonds with the ghost, who has a message about Ava. It is as if the squall from nowhere came to reside within each of them, as life unfolds into nightmares of their own making.
Check out Kathryn's Amazon Author Page here!