Hmmmm... That depends. How far are you along in the process? For example, if you're planning to write a 40K book, and you're 20K there, I'd say push ahead, even if you end up shortening the story. If, however, you're only 5K words into a 90K book, you might want to start fresh in a niche that works better for you.
Some additional thoughts/ideas:
Not sure if all of this rambling helps, but please keep us posted on what you decide, and how it goes. Good luck!
- Others might disagree, but IMO, you MUST read more in your niche (whether it's your current niche, or a new one). This will tell you the "rules." Does that niche require a happily-ever-after? Is the sex explicit or "off-camera"? How much cursing is allowed? For example, if you're writing a cozy mystery, and you drop an F-bomb and/or show explicit sex, you'll probably get some grief from readers/reviewers. If you're writing a billionaire bad boy romance, and DON'T show the sex, you'll get similar grief. Every genre has its own rules. You can bend them, or heck, even break them, but you SHOULD know them. When you consider how very, veeeeery long it takes to write a book, it's worth the time up-front to research the niche by reading at least five of the top sellers. Otherwise, you stand a risk of spending hours and hours writing something, only to alienate your audience by breaking a basic rule of the genre.
- If you don't have a lot of time and/or money for books, you could always browse the Amazon's top 100 free ebooks and skim some of them, assuming they're in your genre. If time is the real issue, you could listen to audiobooks in your genre. That way, you could do your research while doing other things.
- I will tell you this. Writing is a slog. Even if it's in a niche you enjoy, odds are pretty good you'll have lots of days where you don't enjoy it. Lots of days, I HATE it. And lots of days, I'm pretty sure what I'm writing is crap. But usually, when I read it the next day, I'm pleasantly surprised to discover that it's better than I thought. It's a really weird dynamic, because you've got to just keep pushing, pushing, pushing. Write that next sentence, and then the next one after that. This turns into a paragraph. Write the next paragraph, and the next. Then you have a chapter, and so-on. Eventually, you'll probably find that you write some types of scenes faster than others. (For example, sometimes, I can whip out a funny chapter in just a couple of hours, but an intense, emotional chapter might take me ten times that.)
- To break out of your rut, here's another idea: If you do an outline in advance, you could even write your book out-of-order, meaning if you're in the mood to write an action scene that day, you write that, even the action scene doesn't occur until later in the book. I did that with my breakout book, meaning that I wrote it completely out of order, tackling various scenes depending on mood that day. So, if you're in a rut, you could always skip the chapter you're stuck on, and move ahead, with plans to write the chapter you skipped at a later date.
- About Market Value: Remember too, this can be a mixed bag. A couple years ago, I think it was easier to break into those super-hot genres. But now, the competition is even more intense. If you're picking a genre because it's super-hot, that also means you're going to have some pretty intense competition, even moreso than when @HeldforRansom started his amazing thread. I was on the KBoards the other day, and some writers were saying that they've abandoned the super-hot niches, because they're too competitive. The example one gave, in fact, was that they'd switched from billionaire romances to cozy mysteries, with some success, because there was less competition in cozies. (Not sure how true that is, only relaying what they said.)
Great post.
To the person asking - you might get a bit annoyed if you don't at least enjoy something about what you write, imo. I started off in romance, and I am a guy, so it was a bit silly. But what kept me there is that I simply love constructing sentences, I love dropping the word in it's place. And I also like telling fun stories, and intensifying the action. So what happened as a result, is my books were getting more and more into action instead of feelings as I kept writing them. My last book is probably more a thriller with sex, than romance. Editor said it was my best book. Readers bought it. But, a big but, it was a 3rd in the series. If i didn't have all those readers who were into it from the more romantic books I've wrote, I don't know how well it'd do. Just saying make a note of what you like, and blend it. Or maybe that's bad advice and you should just do your thing altogether from the start. Because on that last book, I was quite annoyed writing the sex scenes, it deflated me, and I was asking thriller authors for advice..
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