Changing things up means you lose some people
PJ Harvey and avoiding creative stagnation
Recently I watched PJ Harvey’s1 Tiny Desk Concert (highly recommended if you’re a fan or have ever been one). Ten albums and countless ancillary releases and side projects into a 30+ year career, Harvey is in a sonically mellow-ish place, but still emotionally rich, her raw yet vulnerable contralto as indelible as it’s ever been. There are plenty of beautiful surprises buried in her songs.
I first encountered Polly Jean Harvey and her band when I was almost done with high school. “Down By the Water” happened to come on the radio while I was driving with my boyfriend at the time. He made some comment about understanding why people needed to be high to listen to PJ Harvey and I was like, “Excuse you, I was just thinking that whoever this is, I need to go immediately to Best Buy and get their CD.” (Yes, we bought CDs at Best Buy.)
That relationship didn’t last, but I fell hard for PJ Harvey in all her gothy British extra-ness. I gobbled up her extant albums, plus the four-track demos and B-sides. I bought everything I could get my hands on (especially once I moved to Ann Arbor, where they had decent record stores). I loved that men found her voice irritating. I loved the dark stories she told and the characters she inhabited: emotionally bruised but defiant scorned lovers (Dry), broken and obsessive “crazy” women (Rid of Me), and amoral sex monsters (To Bring You My Love).
Her next several albums didn’t grab me by the shoulders in the same way. A friend bought me Dance Hall at Louse Point for my birthday, and it was fine. It was fine! But there was something pastoral, almost folky about it. (The horror.) Dance Hall was billed as a collaboration, but the next “proper” PJ Harvey album also failed to take up permanent residence in my CD changer, lacking the urgency I had come to expect. I needed music that would express the storm going on inside of me that I was afraid to let out. So I found myself reaching for her older stuff, and eventually moved on to new favorites.
We speak with respect about how certain artists have continually reinvented themselves over their long careers: David Bowie, Madonna, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and many others. We act as though they do this to stay fresh and relevant to keep their fans and gain new ones, but people aren’t ponying up hundreds of dollars in Ticketmaster fees to see their faves from the ‘90s and aughts play their new material. Generally speaking, fans want more of the thing that made them fall in love in the first place, over and over. Only a rare artist, like the ones listed above, can continue to captivate their audience with everything they put out.
In the late nineties, I would have been happy to listen to ten more versions of Dry. If PJ Harvey announced a show today where she was playing Rid of Me start to finish, I would fly across the Atlantic Ocean to see that shit. But Harvey has never been interested in rehashing previous material, so that’s not what we’ve gotten from her. The price of this has undoubtedly been turning a few rabid fans into casual ones, but she also literally gets to keep creating. Because there’s no faster road to creative death than boredom.
If PJ Harvey announced a show today where she was playing Rid of Me start to finish, I would fly across the Atlantic Ocean to see that shit.
Yet the music business (and the publishing business, I swear this is relevant to writing!) wants creators to produce what sells. It’s a bind: you can write the same kinds of songs (or books) that brought you your initial success, and risk getting stuck in a rut. Or evolve, and risk losing your audience.
This is especially true given the information and entertainment firehose we’re all drinking from, which forces creators to build a clear and strong brand in order to stand out. Before I was published I underestimated the extent to which once you write something, your publisher will expect (and usually contractually require!) that the next thing you write be in the same vein. One of my proposals for the second novel in my contract was rejected in part because it had a male protagonist, which—on the surface at least—didn’t go with my whole “feminist speculative suspense” brand. From a business perspective this is very understandable! An author’s novels are products that the publisher is selling, and they want customers to know what they’re getting when they buy. Most people would rather not order a picture frame and receive a vase instead, even if it’s a perfectly nice vase.
I’m not complaining, at all. I feel pretty lucky that I managed to get a Big Five publisher excited about my book and hey, if I’m in a box, it’s a flexible box. I have experienced some of the challenges that come with marketing a cross-genre novel, however. Is it sci-fi? Thriller? Commercial fiction? Nobody knows for sure, not even me! Maybe I should have picked a single genre and stuck with it! Maybe I still should?
Of course many authors write in multiple genres/categories and are wildly successful doing so,2 but it does often seem like there’s that one space where they really shine. Where they give the fans what they want. Very occasionally I will go on Goodreads to see how certain books3 have been reviewed, and a significant portion of the two- and three-star reviews will say, basically, This wasn’t what I expected. The reader anticipated one thing from the cover, the back cover copy, the BookTok buzz. But when it came to the book itself, they felt led astray—betrayed, even.
All this to say that it’s important to meet expectations if you want to be liked.4 But also, if you worry too much about being liked, it’s easy to start creating from a place of fear. Which is, of course, not sustainable.
As a human making art you hope will be sold for money (or is already contracted), you balance your own need for growth and variety with your silly little preference to eat and pay bills (or quit your day job eventually). You have to find ways to keep yourself interested while beguiling your audience—and those two things won’t necessarily be accomplished in the same way. You have to be just predictable enough. Ultimately, who are you writing for? If you become too stagnated or burned out to do the work, then it’s for no one.
After To Bring You My Love, the next PJ Harvey album I really vibed with was 2011’s Let England Shake. It was one of those records where, from the first playthrough, I knew it was going to be one of my new favorites, though I’d ceased following her music for over a decade at that point. The album’s Wikipedia entry quotes an interview in which she calls it “a grand departure” from her previous work. So she has kept evolving, knowing that people might leave—but also that they’ll be back.
Author updates
My newsletter is late this month and I haven’t posted on Instagram in weeks, but I’m 60k into the zero draft I can’t otherwise talk about yet! Things are also starting to happen for the launch of When I’m Her, most of which I also can’t talk about! Do continue to stay tuned.
Reading/watching/listening
Do Your Worst by Rosie Danan
Slow Horses Season 3 (or is it “Series 3” since it’s British? Either way, Rosalind Eleazar and Saskia Reeves are my queens, and I continue to be horrified/impressed by the grossness of Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb.)
DREAMER by Nabihah Iqbal
If you enjoy my ramblings, you might like my books!
The Other Me, which PopSugar called a “Black Mirror-esque rabbit hole,” is an inventive page-turner about the choices we make and the ones made for us.
When I’m Her asks the question: How far would you go to get even with the woman who ruined your life? Out March 26, 2024.
There’s a distinction between PJ Harvey the band/musical entity and Polly Jean Harvey the human who has been its main creative engine and only constant member, but for the purposes of this piece I’m sort-of collapsing them into one.
Some of these authors aren’t writing, say, YA alongside their adult novels because they have a deep creative need to tell stories for teenagers—they’re doing it because the non-compete clauses in their contracts won’t let them write any other books for an adult audience, so it’s either publish in a different category or keep a day job. Capitalism sucks, y’all!
Not my books! Never my books! *Terrified cat hiss*
Liked and paid!
Oh man this resonated. I think about this all the time! And love thinking about the ways that musical artists in particular grow and change and evolve, and you're right -- we often are secretly kind of like, "Can you just play the old stuff, please? That's the album I'm into . . ." but then sometimes there are also artists who are clearly just trying to put out the same thing over and over and then we get bored! It's impossible to "win" which is why you almost have to stop trying.
oh wow- i should check back in with you. my second book is a slightly different genre, and that's likely to be the case for my third. This was a serious convo about my "brand"