With pretty much every story/novel that I write (and I never finish novel-length projects because I’m a disappointment), I start struggling several thousand words in with deciding if I want to write the story exactly how I want, or dial it back a bit in hopes that someday it’s on a shelf in Powells.
Does anyone else have this war with yourself? I know the obvious answer is “write what you want to read and others will want to read it too”, but that doesn’t stop me from being afraid that if I make it too gay (which is usually the thing I’m worried about), I’m blocking the project from ever being considered for mainstream media. (Though I never even finish things, so I’m far off from getting published). It seems I can’t write a straight couple to save my life.
For example, my latest “brilliant idea” is to rewrite Hamlet as a modern-set YA novel. And of course Hamlet and Horatio are the endgame couple. And I know that there are plenty of people out there who would absolutely eat that crap up (like me), but I’m also so afraid of publishers being like, “Why are you trying to publish this gay fanfiction”, you know? And of scaring off the male audience.
I hate that I feel this way because people shouldn’t be afraid to publish lgbt stories. Ugh. Successful books like Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (gay Harry Potter, basically) give me hope though.
So anyways, thoughts?
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