Tracey Alley's Blog - Posts Tagged "future-of-writing"
How far can you stretch yourself as a writer?
I've never wanted, as an author, to be pigeon-holed. I've always wanted to be able to experiment with different genre's and even different styles within the same genre. I already write poetry, children's books, non-fiction work as well as fantasy and my latest experiment with flash fiction was very, very different to anything I'd written before.
The beauty of Amazon and self-publishing is that you have the freedom to do these kinds of experiments but I'm beginning to wonder if that's a 'smart' thing to do career wise. Mention the name Stephen King and people automatically think 'horror', so much so that when he wanted to branch out a little he had to write under a pen name. The same is true of Terry Pratchett - he's famous for his Discworld series and very few people even know that he actually does write other books. So does that mean that to have a truly successful writing career you have to pick a genre and stick with it?
Don't get me wrong, I love writing fantasy. I've cherished every moment I've spent in the land of Kaynos. I just don't want to be stuck there forever. Perhaps my imagination is limited but I think there are only so many good stories that I can write in that mythical land before it would become boring - for me, at least. But I can't help but wonder if I'm doing my overall writing career a disservice by wandering off into other genre's.
Or is this perhaps the new direction that writers and publishers will start to take? Is it possible that those of us who are riding the Indie train will set a new trend? Will we start to see Romance novelists writing Horror, or Mystery writers penning Westerns? And if that should become the accepted norm in writing and publishing how will readers react to that? As a reader, if you grabbed the latest Stephen King and it turned out to be a comedy - no matter how well written - would you be disappointed?
These are just a few thoughts and maybe it's just me and my own desire to try my hand at so many different things - I guess I just want to be able to tell ALL the stories in my head, not just the fantasy ones. :)
The beauty of Amazon and self-publishing is that you have the freedom to do these kinds of experiments but I'm beginning to wonder if that's a 'smart' thing to do career wise. Mention the name Stephen King and people automatically think 'horror', so much so that when he wanted to branch out a little he had to write under a pen name. The same is true of Terry Pratchett - he's famous for his Discworld series and very few people even know that he actually does write other books. So does that mean that to have a truly successful writing career you have to pick a genre and stick with it?
Don't get me wrong, I love writing fantasy. I've cherished every moment I've spent in the land of Kaynos. I just don't want to be stuck there forever. Perhaps my imagination is limited but I think there are only so many good stories that I can write in that mythical land before it would become boring - for me, at least. But I can't help but wonder if I'm doing my overall writing career a disservice by wandering off into other genre's.
Or is this perhaps the new direction that writers and publishers will start to take? Is it possible that those of us who are riding the Indie train will set a new trend? Will we start to see Romance novelists writing Horror, or Mystery writers penning Westerns? And if that should become the accepted norm in writing and publishing how will readers react to that? As a reader, if you grabbed the latest Stephen King and it turned out to be a comedy - no matter how well written - would you be disappointed?
These are just a few thoughts and maybe it's just me and my own desire to try my hand at so many different things - I guess I just want to be able to tell ALL the stories in my head, not just the fantasy ones. :)
