things you shouldn’t say to writers

Elsewhere, when I posted the DEMON HUNTS cover, a reader responded with words to the effect of “I’d rather have new books than new covers.”

::looks into the camera::

Another reader stepped in to try to head them off at the pass, said I’d gotten the rights back and that I was re-releasing them with my own covers and that the story was finished. Unfortunately, the OP responded with “if the main character isn’t dead, the story isn’t over!”

::LOOKS. INTO. THE CAMERA::

Part of me wants to say “I made the error of responding with ‘You’d be amazed at how that kind of entitlement makes me never want to write another Joanne story again,'” but in fact I don’t feel it was an error. I did anticipate that they would double down again, and they did. They didn’t see it as entitlement but appreciation, offered to stop being a fan, & said statements like mine were why readers stopped reading authors.

Entitlement like theirs is certainly a reason authors stop writing characters, because, see, it’s my humbly held opinion that “I wish there were more of these” is a much different statement than “if the main character isn’t dead the story isn’t over.”

Readers don’t get to make that decision. GOD KNOWS there are times I wish we did. I can write you a LIST of books and characters I could read more of, forever. But we have no idea the circumstances surrounding the end of a series, why a writer stopped writing it, what may have been going on in their lives, what effect something may have had to want them to end a story or not revisit that world.

And it may not be dramatic. It’s not, for the Walker Papers. I had a story I wanted to tell. When I got to the end of it, the door closed on Joanne’s life. Occasionally you get a glance through a window when I write a short story, & I’m delighted readers would like more, but I have ten million stories I want to tell & can’t (won’t) spend my whole life on one.

I’m not really mad at this reader, although they’re probably mad at me by now. I just think it’s really obnoxious to say “this story isn’t done because the MC isn’t dead.” Lives are like that. Books are not. Writers don’t owe us more of the stories we love.

That is, in fact, what fan fiction is for. Would going and writing (or reading) fic be the same as me writing more? No, of course not. But that’s still what it’s for.

Anyway, I don’t really want to dogpile on that particular reader, but this kind of thing happens to writers probably more than you’d imagine, even if they’re not working at a GRRM level of fame, frustration and disappointment. Generally speaking I don’t think my readers, who are awesome, need to be told to think a bit when you interact with writers because they’re people too, but…sometimes people do need to hear it.