Everyday Canvas

Taking Risks with Writing

Prompt: "Be courageous and try to write in a way that scares you a little". Haley Gerth Do you agree with this? Should we be daring?

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Sure, I do. I am all for being daring, and I do that quite often, which confuses some of the readers. I am not afraid of taking chances. I feel I can do what I want with my writing because I have no other intention than writing what I want to write. I am not always successful but I never go after success if that success is only for success itself, either.

After all, a story can be so well crafted that it will gain the admiration of even the strictest editor, but if it doesn’t have heart, what good is it? Where is its risk factor? It probably belongs in teaching materials that show how to make the best of the craft. When a writer takes a risk and goes after what his or her heart wants to put on the page, the work will shine in some way but also, from some other angle, it may also be a flop. Taking risks isn’t easy, but it is so much fun.

Yet, what does taking risks entail? What may we risk? I’ll make a list to be added to in the future. Here it goes:

Excluding one's regular readers and other people. This means the writer is in the habit of writing to suit or to please a certain group of people, and when he or she wavers from it, taking a risk, those people can be offended. Such as a commercial romance writer suddenly writing a heavy historical treatise and disappointing his/her readers.

Offending family, friends, and some prickly people who might think the writer is satirizing, displaying, or unmasking them.

Exposing oneself as to one’s relationships, background, past or present life, feeling, biases, hidden or over psychological traits, almost like being on a therapist’s couch, but then, we can always hide behind our characters, can’t we!

Wasting one’s time on a possible flop. I’m now reading a book called Vera, whose subject is the wife of Vladimir Nabokov. Vera was the woman behind her husband's success, and in writing Lolita, Nabokov took a great risk and his book couldn’t be published in the USA due to the moralizing criteria of its time. He knew that would be, and plus he risked his academic position, but he wrote it anyway. Finally, after many years of its completion, due to Vera's relentless efforts, the book was published in Paris. The story’s subject is taboo, yes, but it is mostly an intellectual love story rather than erogenous. Once the book's fame took off, it was adapted to screen at least a couple of times. Having said this, I would be hesitant to write anything on risky sex stuff, possibly because my lack of knowledge on the subject would show. But I can take risks in other areas without blinking an eye if the subject is after my heart.