Kill the Book of Your Heart
The phrase “the book of my heart” was once a terribly easy shorthand among writers. It meant “I think I found an idea that balanced the market and what I want to write on the head of a pin.” It signaled that you thought, hoped, that this would be your breakout. The one that hit it big. It also said something shorthand about the journey to get there—usually this phrase was said about a book that had come after some struggle within the industry. When they went on to become successes, even marginally, the phrase became part of story, the advice handed down to newer writers. What you really need to do is write the book of your heart.
I used to hear this phrase a lot more, back in ye olden days of 2014-2018. The sentiment still drifts around occasionally—over dinners, a few drinks in, when we are wistfully talking about projects and our hopes for them. But at the end of the day, having to schill our books of the heart on the -tok/gram made us all look like fucking fools. Our collective reaction then became to push out, not art, but books that are essentially content. Things we construct out of a handful of tropes and aesthetics to be pleasing, but are soulless. More and more the conversation has shifted into this kind of detached, almost cold approach of triangulating the market and social media into an idea.
So we go in cycles with no answers—do you write for the market or do you write for your heart? That’s what I want to talk about, wearing my hats both as a successful marketer and brand strategist, and also as a commercial failure of a writer. (lol)
Kill the Book of Your Heart
My main bone to pick with “book of your heart” and how it’s been used is that it implies that the way to make something successful is via a type of blood magic. I always get annoyed at books that have blood magic without any real cost besides the initial wound. Blood magic has an incredibly high cost psychologically. It is a literal draining of life, not like eat a cracker and rest. This is a draining of your artistic energy in the most boundary-less way, especially for people who are of color or who have marginalized (or exoticized) backgrounds. It’s been a way to tell people to put their identities and trauma out for consumption without making it seem like a costly thing.
When you have people without strong emotional boundaries, who are desperate to find connection, looking for how to make their voice heard, and an industry answering that desperation and lack of boundaries with “all you have to do is write the book of your heart”it creates a recipe for utter emotional devastation. I have been around long enough to see that the life cycle of blood magic books is short and painful for the artist.
Another way this fails is by attaching artistic fulfillment to the external success. Let’s say you write the book of your heart and it does well—well, now what do you write for your follow up? You’ve got to write another book of your heart, and it probably won’t do as well, and does that make it any less of your heart? How do you manage the fallout from a failure of the book of your heart?
There’s also the way “book of your heart” skirts being held accountable for the work you put out. It’s not thoughtful or even emotional, it’s sentimental. You don’t have to hold yourself accountable for timing, craft, execution—it was the book of your heart, after all. It allows you to feel like you’ve done everything you could simply because you left an enormous amount of heartfelt emotion on the table. Then, you might be tempted to feel bitter, angry and entitled if the industry doesn’t know what to do with this mess you brought in and left on the floor. Definitely not speaking from painful experience. From a short essay I wrote in 2016 about it:
Write the book of your heart. But what if the book of your heart doesn’t sell?
I was in West Virginia. Morose. Staring at clear stars over an October lake in my sagging camp chair. I was thinking about that question. I only had one answer and it was a terrible answer. I didn’t like that answer. My husband quietly smoked while I sat beside him and cried over the book of my heart. The stars listened, but did not reply. And in the morning, I went home and did the only thing I could do. I kept on writing my heart.
I wrote my poor little heart out, honestly. And then it had to change because it was even less sustainable than my then-marriage, lol.
Murder the Market
We did talk about the market in those days. But I don’t feel like it was the way we talk about it now. Back then, when thinking about a new project, the market factored in maybe at 30-40% and now I feel like it’s like 70-80%. So many books these days feel like they are manufactured out of tropes and aesthetics and written for maximum quotability. And they work for the medium of social media! But when you read them, they are somewhat hollow, frustrating and ultimately, forgettable. We’ve course corrected to the other end of the spectrum. Everyone is beautiful, no one is horny. Everyone has high stakes, but no one is at risk.
A lot of this swing was due to generational changes. Millennial earnestness moved out of the cultural zeitgeist. Gen Z loves love, despite (or maybe because of) it’s problems finding it in real life, and it makes sense that where we once had earnest cancer books ruling the NYT, now we have the reign of romantasy. And like I mentioned in my introduction, social media contributed to this shift. The only thing worse than shilling your book is shilling the book you poured your deepest, most wounded self into, thinking it would pay off.
Paying attention to the market is a reasonable, smart thing and I get kind of annoyed when authors (especially ones in the business a long time) feign naivety about the work they should be doing to engage with readers. Part of your job, if you want to publish, is to be strategic—after all, the business of art supports your art. But in this current atmosphere it’s twisted, the business of content has somehow become the art. So many times I feel like I pick up a book being promised so much, and what I get is a novel assembled like an instagram guru course. A lot of promises, slick packaging, and a disappointing delivery.
This method also allows us to avoid accountability, in the same way writing a book of our heart does. Maybe even more so in this current landscape. More people than ever are looking for how to become a succesful writer and the noise feels impossible to break through. When someone does it all right—they have the tropes, the hook, the aesthetics, the identities, the mythology, the branding, whatever, and it still fails (because it does! one thing is timeless, books fail!) then what do you have? Resentment, anger, entitlement. What the industry promised didn’t work.
So what do we do now?
A Secret Other Third Thing
I have written books of my heart and I’ve written to the market. One destroys me and one makes me break out in hives and abandon the manuscript immediately. When I hear other writers talk about either one of these, I just listen and nod because, you know, it’s a canon event. And I think maybe they’ll get lucky and probably they’ll do it way better than me. Maybe I’m just a person who had to figure this out because I couldn’t succeed any other way. But that’s okay to. The secret to writing, is to write to satisfy yourself.
That’s it.
People kept asking me recently how I felt about going back on submission. I would kind of laugh each time because I’d have forgotten about submission. I feel good. I don’t think about it like I did before. It’s just whatever it is. In the past, I wanted the industry to confirm in some tangible way that I made a good piece of art. This time, I delivered something that satisfies me, is a fulfilled vision, a work, finished. I don’t need anyone to tell me anything. It might find an editor with a vision for it, and it might not, but either way, my vision is complete.
I used to be afraid of this moment. I didn’t know what it felt like to truly try, to believe in my work, to hold hold myself accountable for my work. I thought it would feel even more devastating than pouring my heart out. Like I’d never be able to write again. But it doesn’t feel devastating at all. I feel the most artistically content and satisfied I ever have in my life. And while a check would be nice, acclaim would be nice. I know checks do not actually bring this kind of contentment and acclaim just bring panic attacks. It might sell, but that’s just something out of my hands. I already know what I’m writing next and I’m excited about the new vision.
Beyonce is the perfect example. I think Lemonade marked the point where she said fuck it, I’m going to satisfy myself. And you know what, she still hasn’t won Album of the Year. But she’s not bound by it either. She is, arguably, bigger. . . beyond it. (still, give it to her you fucking racist cowards). Her brand is Black Excellence and it’s clear in each creative vision she brings into the world that she is focused on satisfying herself and her vision. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that she’s never been bigger, but that also is clearly secondary to her vision.
Once you learn to satisfy yourself, you’ve learned how to satisfy an audience. Sometimes that’s only an audience of one, but that’s okay. You’ve done what all artists actually want and feel fulfilled by. Everything after that is secondary.