Are Authors Entrepreneurs?

I hope that when I get to the end of setting up The Story Mint and developing the Style Guide, I don’t discover I’m an entrepreneurial junkie. I know I will miss the amazing geyser-like excitement that comes from turning what at first glance appears to be a failure, into a success. The biggest buzz of all has been realising that my business is not The Story Mint but the Style Guide, of which the Story Mint is part.

Dr Kathleen Vohs from the University of Minnesota has released a study which shows that entrepreneurs are not motivated by money but that personality plays a big part in what drives them. http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml

For example, she states that entrepreneurs are motivated by what she calls extra-rational motivations. Put simply, these are motivators that deliver a social or psychological reward. These are listed as including: the joy of creation, the satisfaction of team building and the desire to achieve meaning in life.

The point the article makes is that when money is the main driver in a start-up, the willingness of the entrepreneur to accept guidance from outside parties is reduced. This failure to involve others can impede the growth of a venture. To quote the article, ‘It has become a point of general agreement that great ventures require successful teams to execute.’ This is an important insight because it suggests a group of people see the potential of a venture and they become the hub around which the inner circle gathers. One person might bring them together but any success that results is the combined effort of many individuals.

So I wonder if my dream of writing a novel that would influence lives and bring about change is any different to the motivation driving me as an entrepreneur.

The writing dream continues to flourish with a mirage-like shimmer, but is growing dimmer as I realise that people may not want to share in my dream of changing lives through literature. That’s a shame, because I have invested large sums of money and time in researching, writing and editing a novel locked away in a drawer.

The story of The Story Mint runs parallel to that story . . . a vision that was all about giving people an opportunity to realise their writing dreams. When we published our first novel, Simon Angelo’s Tokyo Curry, and the success of our other services, demonstrated to me that anything is possible when people work together to achieve a dream.

Along the way I discovered a bigger dream . . . the Style Guide.

So what of my original dream; that of having a novel published that will change people’s understanding of the world? Well, the novel is written and edited but I am not in a position to allocate any more resources to it.

We have other novels, Tokyo Curry for example, that have first claim to our slender marketing budget. With digital publishing producing so much content, anything we publish has to stand out. A strong marketing and promotional campaign is the only way to achieve that.

As an author, I am in the middle of a collision between two forces – traditional publishing and emerging digital publishing. Digital publishing has given authors choices – between self-publishing and going via a traditional publisher.

Self-publishing sets writers free to explore topics they may not ever consider if their driver was to make money. Being free to write about whatever one feels like sounds marvellously unfettered. But what if no one wants to read what the writer produces?

The commercial imperative driving traditional publishers means publishers need to sell books and to make a profit. This driver means that a large number of topics are left untouched.

And that’s the dilemma facing writers whose passion lies in social commentary. Do they write about their passion and risk never being heard or do they choose topics they know will find a market and hope that one day they will be able to sell the novel closest to their hearts when someone is interested.

In a way, I have made that call in relation to the Style Guide. Go with the product that can potentially unlock the voice of thousands and pick up on the novel another day when life is less busy and absorbing.

So I wonder . . . is an author also a kind of entrepreneur – especially if he or she self-publishes and becomes responsible for self-marketing and promotion? Perhaps.

Style is a Writer’s Fingerprint

When I researched the Style Guide, I was surprised by the way selections of writing clustered according to genre. The other thing that staggered me was how volume after volume stacked on top of other volumes. I have absolutely no doubt that if we kept inputting data we would build on the mass of data clustering on top of itself.

So does this mean that writers are not unique individuals after all and all that time spent crafting a sentence is simply repeating a collection of words written in the same way by someone else?

The answer to that is: ‘not at all.’

What no writer can replicate is voice or style. Writing is about how authoritatively a writer stamps the writing with his or her voice.  That is the voice readers respond to as their eyes glide over the page.

This is what the Style Guide is measuring when it gives a writer feedback. It reports on a writer’s voice and tone.

I suspect there is truth to the claim that there are no new topics in the world.

For some, this may be a disturbing thought. But it is not important because what really matters is how writers treat the topics. That is what gives every topic a fresh slant, a newness that makes the reader say, ‘wow, that’s a new way of looking at things.’

Style, our writing fingerprint, gives old topics a new voice. A writer may borrow from other writers but how the writer cobbles those borrowings together is what gives the writing sparkle. It is what makes old topics appear new.

By the way, I am not advocating plagiarism here. Stealing someone else’s writing and claiming it as your own is reprehensible.

Every writer has a different voice, a unique voice. This voice gives words shades of meaning. The voice of the writer is not replicated anywhere else. Writers may have similar styles to other writers but never the same style.

A reader also does something similar when he or she reads. Every reader approaches a piece of writing from his or her perspective and takes from it the meaning shaped by past experience and understanding. How the writer’s work is interpreted is shaped by environment and world view. Together the writer and reader give everything we write new meaning, new colour. That is the essence of style.

When we read a text, there will be occasions when we catch snatches of something familiar. For example, phrases like John Donne’s (1572-1636) ‘No man is an island . . .’ frequently appears in different contexts. There are many examples. The new author will take that familiar saying, surround it with his or her words and create new meaning. The familiar maxim gains new meaning as a consequence of the author’s action.

That intertextuality tells us we all carry within us knowledge we have acquired over the years and, as writers, we transfer those insights to the page. However, a writer will put his or her own spin on it, stamping upon it a style that makes it feel, sound and appear new. Even if it relies heavily on borrowed text it is still new as it is shaped according to that writer’s crafting

The voice or tone of a piece of communication is important, not just in terms of capturing the writer’s intention but also to give a reader insight, at a subconscious level, into what lies beneath, the unspoken elements of the writing. This applies to all kinds of writing, all genres and is what constitutes style.

What this tells us is that topics are defined by experience. How we write about them is governed by style.

Whenever I pause in a busy day and think about that, I am amazed and relieved at the same time. Amazed because of all the people in the world, there is no other person whose writing style is exactly like mine. Relieved because it means I can write as much as I like, broadcast wherever I want and know no one will ever produce a piece of writing like mine….that is unless they have copied it.

It does not mean that someone won’t come along with a similar idea and do a better job or vice versa. It simply means that the way I write is distinctive. Developing that distinctiveness is what every writer should focus on because that is the essence of what he or she writes and now we hve the Style Guide to assist in that process.

The Style Guide makes no judgement on content. It reports on voice and tone, the writing’s fingerprint or style.