The Golden Child

I wonder if every writer deals with this. They write something they love AND they know is lovable. Not a great masterpiece, but lovable. But then they wonder if they'll get stuck writing less successful derivatives of that lovable thing for the rest of their lives.

I'm not there yet, because I'm not a published author, but I'm beginning to see the shape of it. I've written 2 and 3/4 things (the third novel is on pause while I rework some things), but the first thing and mostly-finished-third thing are bookending a golden child: the lightest of my books, the most fun, the least interested in migration and language, the tonal oddball, and the one that I'm starting to believe might be a slam dunk.

Everyone who's read it so far loves it. They call it fun, accessible, easy-to-read, difficult to put down, and confident. This is also a cross-section of ages (mid-twenties, thirties, forties, fifties) and both genders. Now, I love it too. I love the characters, I love how easy it was to write (it never made me cry. Not once! The others—sigh). And it does have a lot of stuff bubbling under it: it grapples with sacrifice, religion, complex friendships, soft colonialism, and class consciousness.

But I do wonder, since it's tonally so different from the others, how many novels like that I have in me. I'm actually fine writing the more minimalistic, airy novels (like 1+3), that probably would have a more polarized readership and maybe a smaller overall audience. I would be lying, however, if I didn't also feel constantly pulled by plots leading me in this other direction. I have the unfinished third thing, which is very much in the airier, more minimalist tone, currently duking it out in my head with a magical realism rom-com about a girl who works at a record shop. And I know which one more people want to read.

I've spoken about this with people before and they encourage having a pen name or becoming a hybrid author (some self-publish, some trad). But I'm actually hoping to figure out a way to make the tonal variance part of the whole thing, especially since there is enough overlap despite the tone variance (tough girls vs earnest men/a focus on music, art, or poetry/international settings and other languages, etc). There are writers out there that play with tone and genre (I am NOT putting myself on his level but Kazuo Ishiguro comes to mind immediately) and I'm interested in researching others who've made that sort of wobble work for them.

For now, I will say reading through beta read reactions of the golden child have been heartening after an otherwise bruising couple of months as a new writer.