How do I decide what I are going to write?

It depends.

Left on my own recognizance, I make very little calculation about it. I have never been one of those writers who thinks about what is currently popular when planning his next book. I’m not a bandwagon jumper. Inspiration strikes, I jot down the idea, and after a while, if I can find the time and a good hook, I might expand it into a book.

Jane Carver of Waar, for example, was, despite what you might think, all inspiration and no calculation. I didn’t write it because the John Carter movie was coming out. I wrote it ten years ago when there wasn’t even a whiff of Barsoom in the air, just because I liked the idea. It might have sold because the John Carter movie is coming out, but that’s a different story, and not mine to tell.

On the other hand, there are many times when there has been a great deal of calculation at the beginning of the writing process – usually when I’m trying to get a job on an existing property or sell a short story to a themed anthology. My first calculation is determining whether I like the project the producer or publisher or editor is recruiting for enough that I can write on it with enthusiasm. This is the most important calculation, as no amount of money will make up for discovering, half-way through, that you can’t stand writing it. The second calculation is straight up math. Will the project pay enough, either in money or future opportunity, to make it worth my time away from my personal projects? The third calculation is, can I come up with a pitch that gives them what they’re looking for in a fresh and interesting way?

In my time I have made mistakes in all three calculations – taking writing jobs that I would later have chewed off my own leg to escape, taking jobs that I loved writing but which didn’t pay enough to cover my groceries, let alone my rent, and taking jobs that I could not come up with any interesting ideas for.

Once these three calculations are made, however, and I am hired for the job, it’s all inspiration again, though of a different kind and pace than when I’m developing my own ideas. Then, inspiration is a slow and deliberate process, where I let things stew for months and sometimes years at a time. I feel free to take the time to fully develop the themes I’m interested in and invent interesting, well-rounded characters. I can work on layering and interweaving stories and subplots into a deep and complex whole.

Working to measure, particularly under deadline, requires a completely different kind of inspiration, more like the kind required to compete in timed crossword puzzle solving or Tetris. You are given an existing set of parameters, sometimes very strange and odd shaped, and must then fit them neatly into the constraints of the medium, while at the same time making out of them an exciting, emotionally fulfilling story that you are proud to put your name to.

Which do I prefer? Both. I love the challenge of writing that requires more calculation than inspiration, and I love the freedom of writing that requires more inspiration than calculation. Each is the palette cleanser for the other, and I hope I am fortunate enough to do both kinds of work for years to come.