The Questions That Drive Us: Exploring Authorial Purpose

A National Writing Project study reveals that writers connecting their work to personal questions persist significantly longer, regardless of publication success. Authors write for reasons that transcend publication. Behind story crafting lie deeper questions that fuel creative persistence despite rejection and doubt. Richard French writes across genres under both his own name and as Raven Fontaine because his work explores questions that matter personally and broadly, with each identity allowing him to examine different aspects of these questions. This post examines the core motivations behind his writing while offering frameworks for other writers to connect with their own essential purposes. Understanding why you write proves as important as knowing how.

The Non-Fiction Foundation in Writing Across Genres

Richard French began his publishing journey firmly rooted in non-fiction, exploring ethical dilemmas and leadership principles that reflected his professional background and personal values. His early works established a pattern of questioning conventional wisdom about organizational ethics and personal responsibility that would later inform his fiction writing across genres.

French’s non-fiction books addressed questions like “How do ethical frameworks shape organizational culture?” and “What responsibilities do leaders carry beyond profit generation?” These explorations weren’t merely academic exercises but represented French’s attempt to reconcile his observations of workplace dynamics with his personal values system.

For writers seeking to identify their own core motivations, French’s approach offers valuable insight. Rather than beginning with market analysis, he started with questions that genuinely troubled him, questions that kept him awake and engaged his thinking even when not actively writing.

Techniques for Identifying Your Core Writing Motivations

To discover what truly drives your writing, consider these practical approaches:

• The repeated conversation test: Notice which topics you find yourself discussing repeatedly in different contexts. These recurring themes often point to your fundamental questions.
• The emotional response inventory: Track which news stories, books, or conversations provoke your strongest emotional responses. The patterns reveal what matters most to you.
• The contradiction collection: Identify aspects of conventional wisdom that don’t align with your experience. These friction points often generate the most compelling writing.

When examining how purpose shapes non-fiction work, French’s approach demonstrates that the most compelling non-fiction emerges from the intersection of personal curiosity and broader social questions. His books on ethical decision frameworks connected individual choices to organizational outcomes, showing how personal values manifest in professional contexts.

Exercise: Drafting Your Personal Writing Purpose Statement

Take fifteen minutes to complete this exercise:

1. List three questions that consistently capture your attention across different areas of your life.
2. For each question, write down why answering it matters both personally and to others.
3. Identify patterns or connections between these questions.
4. Draft a single sentence that captures the underlying purpose driving your interest in these questions.
5. Refine this statement until it resonates emotionally and intellectually.

This purpose statement becomes your creative compass, particularly valuable when facing rejection or creative blocks in your writing journey.

The Fiction Expansion While Writing Across Genres

While Richard French’s non-fiction established his analytical approach to ethical questions, creating the Raven Fontaine identity opened new avenues for exploring similar themes through narrative. This transition exemplifies how writing across genres can maintain thematic consistency while employing different creative approaches.

The Fontaine novels explore moral complexity through character-driven stories rather than direct analysis. This alter ego allowed French to examine questions about ethical boundaries, personal transformation, and societal responsibility within fictional contexts where complexities could unfold naturally through character development and plot.

Fontaine’s fiction particularly excels at exploring the shadow side of human nature – the contradictions and compromises that make ethical decisions so challenging in real life. By creating characters who embody these tensions, Fontaine’s work achieves what French’s non-fiction could only describe.

Practical Approaches to Identifying Themes While Writing Across Genres

For writers looking to identify the questions driving their fiction, consider these approaches:

• Character motivation analysis: Examine what your protagonists and antagonists want and why. The conflicts between them often reveal your core questions.
• Pattern recognition: Look for recurring situations or dilemmas across your stories, even when the settings differ dramatically.
• Resolution review: Analyze how your stories typically resolve. The nature of your endings reveals what you believe about your central questions.

Fontaine’s novels demonstrate these principles in action. Despite varying settings and characters, they consistently explore how individuals handle competing values and find meaning in morally ambiguous situations. Each story approaches these questions from different angles, creating a body of work that circles the same fundamental concerns.

Exercise: Mapping the Questions Your Work Explores

Create a visual map of your work with these steps:

1. Place your central question in the middle of a page.
2. Branch out with sub-questions that stem from this central concern.
3. For each existing or planned project, note which questions it primarily addresses.
4. Identify gaps – important questions you haven’t yet explored.
5. Consider how different genres might help you address these gaps.

The Integration Journey

“The Convergence: Broken Magic” represents a significant milestone in French’s writing journey – the integration of his twin authorial identities. This novel brings together the analytical depth of his non-fiction with the narrative exploration of the Fontaine works, creating something entirely new while remaining consistent with his core questions.

The integration wasn’t merely stylistic but represented a maturation of French’s thinking about his central questions. By bringing his identities together, he acknowledged that the ethical questions driving his work require both analytical and narrative approaches – that some truths are best understood through logical analysis while others emerge more clearly through story.

This integration created a distinctive voice that readers recognize as uniquely French’s, regardless of which name appears on the cover. The voice combines measured analytical passages with vivid character moments, creating a rhythm that mirrors how people actually engage with complex questions in real life.

Techniques for Bringing Your Various Creative Interests Together

Writers looking to integrate seemingly disparate creative interests can benefit from these approaches:

• Shared question identification: Find the common questions underlying your different projects, even when the surface topics seem unrelated.
• Cross-genre experimentation: Try importing techniques from one genre into another (e.g., using data visualization in fiction or narrative techniques in non-fiction).
• Intentional voice development: Consciously develop a voice that works across different types of content while remaining distinctively yours.

The result of integration isn’t homogenization but a richer creative palette. As French’s work demonstrates, integration allows writers to address complex questions more comprehensively by employing multiple approaches.

Exercise: Identifying Connections Between Your Seemingly Separate Interests

Complete this exercise to discover hidden connections:

1. List your three most disparate creative interests or projects.
2. For each, identify the fundamental question or concern that drives your interest.
3. Look for patterns or connections between these underlying motivations.
4. Brainstorm a project that would draw on elements from all three interests.
5. Outline how this integrated project would address your core questions in ways your separate projects couldn’t.

The Meaning-Market Balance in Writing Across Genres

Throughout his career, Richard French has balanced personal meaning and market realities with remarkable consistency. Rather than allowing market trends to dictate his topics, he’s maintained focus on his core questions while making strategic decisions about presentation, format, and timing.

This approach doesn’t ignore market realities but places them in proper perspective. French recognizes that sustainable writing careers require finding readers, but he ensures that commercial considerations serve his fundamental purpose rather than replacing it.

His dual-identity approach represents one creative solution to this challenge. By publishing more commercially accessible fiction as Fontaine while releasing more experimental work under his own name, French created space for both market engagement and creative exploration while writing across genres.

Practical Approaches to Maintaining Integrity While Finding Readers

Writers seeking their own balance can consider these strategies:

• Core/periphery identification: Distinguish between the non-negotiable elements of your work (your “core”) and aspects that can be adapted to reach readers (the “periphery”).
• Strategic publishing sequencing: Plan publication order to build audience gradually, starting with more accessible work that still reflects your values.
• Audience alignment research: Identify readers already interested in your core questions rather than trying to force your work to match unrelated market trends.

French’s approach shows that market considerations need not compromise integrity. By finding readers who share his interest in ethical questions and moral complexity, he’s built a sustainable career without sacrificing his essential purpose.

Exercise: Identifying Your Non-Negotiable Creative Elements

Work through this process to clarify your boundaries:

1. List the ten elements that define your work (themes, style, structure, etc.).
2. For each element, ask: “Would my work still feel authentic to me without this?”
3. Circle the elements that are absolutely essential to your creative identity.
4. For each remaining element, brainstorm how it might be adapted to reach readers while preserving its essence.
5. Create a personal manifesto stating what you will and won’t compromise to find readers.

The Evolution of Purpose in Writing Across Genres

Perhaps the most instructive aspect of Richard French’s journey is his willingness to let his purposes and approaches evolve over time. While maintaining thematic consistency, his specific questions and methods have matured significantly throughout his career.

This evolution reflects an understanding that creative purposes aren’t static declarations but ongoing conversations between writers and their experiences. As French encountered new ideas and challenges, his central questions gained nuance and complexity, which in turn enriched his fiction inspiring change.

His early non-fiction explored ethical frameworks somewhat prescriptively, while his later work – both fiction and non-fiction – embraces ambiguity and complexity. This shift doesn’t represent abandonment of his core purpose but its natural maturation through continued exploration while writing across genres.

Techniques for Recognizing and Integrating Purpose Shifts

Writers can track their own evolution with these approaches:

• Regular purpose reviews: Schedule annual reflection on how your central questions might be evolving based on recent experiences.
• Progressive drafting: Return to important projects after significant intervals to see how your perspective has shifted.
• Creative autobiography: Periodically document your creative journey, noting how your concerns and approaches have changed.

The key insight from French’s example is that evolution strengthens rather than dilutes purpose. By allowing his questions to mature naturally, he’s created work with both consistency and growth.

Exercise: Tracking Your Purpose Evolution While Writing Across Genres

Complete this reflection exercise:

1. List the most important projects you’ve completed over the past five years.
2. For each, identify the central question or concern that drove it.
3. Arrange these projects chronologically and look for patterns of evolution.
4. Write a brief narrative of how your creative concerns have developed over time.
5. Project forward: based on this trajectory, what questions might your work explore next?

Conclusion

Writing sustains itself through connection to questions that matter. Richard French’s publishing journey—from non-fiction under his own name to fiction as Raven Fontaine, and eventually fiction under both identities—demonstrates how core interests can manifest in different forms while maintaining thematic consistency. By examining your own driving questions—identifying core purpose, recognizing consistent themes, integrating seemingly separate interests, balancing meaning with market, and accepting evolution—you’ll build a foundation that supports continued creation regardless of external validation. The most enduring work stems not from market analysis but from authentic engagement with questions worth exploring. Thank you for joining us throughout this behind-the-scenes series on the creative processes that bring Indie Pen Press books to life.

FAQs

How do I know if my writing purpose is compelling enough to sustain a career?

A truly compelling writing purpose connects personal passion with universal human concerns. If your core questions continue to engage you after extensive exploration and resonate with others when shared, they likely have the depth to sustain long-term creative work across multiple projects and genres.

Can I have different purposes for different genres of writing?

While your approach and emphasis may shift across genres, the most cohesive and powerful bodies of work typically explore related questions from different angles. Think of genres as different lenses focusing on your central concerns rather than completely separate territories requiring different purposes.

How often should I reassess my writing purpose?

Schedule formal purpose reviews annually, but remain attentive to shifts in your interests between reviews. Significant life events often trigger purpose evolution. The goal isn’t rigid consistency but conscious evolution—knowing how and why your focus is changing rather than drifting unconsciously.

What if market research suggests my purpose-driven work won’t find readers?

Rather than abandoning your purpose, refine your approach to presentation and audience targeting. Often, the issue isn’t the core purpose but how it’s framed. Experiment with different entry points, formats, and platforms while preserving your essential questions and concerns.