Experimentation and Finding the New
One of the sites I visit regularly is our own Christchurch City Libraries blog, which has been doing a fabulous job of keeping going and delivering great content, regardless of earthquakes, demolition, and the very dry weather we've been having. (We will not say the word drought—yet!)
One of yesterday's featured posts was titled "Should Authors Experiment?" The gist of this particular post was about authors who have made their name writing for adults, but recently turned their hands to Junior or YA fiction—with varying degrees of success apparently, which led the poster to query whether writers should experiment in this way.
As you will see, this got me thinking—and commenting—because I do think it's really important that writers experiment and try new techniques, including writing for different age groups, or in new genres. For example, a few years ago I decided to write a short story in each of a range of different genres, eg a romance, a crime story, a ghost story, historical fiction, contemporary realism—I am sure you're getting the idea! I also separated out the speculative subgenres, putting my pen to hard scifi, space opera, and Arthurian fantasy amongst a few others.
Needless to say, I had a lot of fun, but I also learned a lot, particularly about the kind of stories where my writing flowed, as well as genres that I found more difficult. I also discovered that I had a "style"—which always asserted itself no matter what kind of story I was trying to write! Knowing this means that I also know what I have to work on if I want to push the boundaries of my personal style, or work in an area where I am not naturally comfortable.
So I do think experimentation and trying the new is really important if I want to keep growing and developing as a writer. Here's the thing though—not all the experiments are going to see the light of day! Or should see daylight, even.
I am generally held to be a fair hand at baking—cakes, biscuits/cookies, and desserts of all kinds my speciality—but there've still been plenty of times where things haven't, um, quite worked out. Mostly you know why with baking—forgot an ingredient, put in too much of one thing, not enough of another—but even with baking it can sometimes be a mystery why a creation just isn't quite right. But unless you put yourself out there and try new things, you never get to have the great successes either—and it's exactly the same with writing. (And life, maybe?)
The trick is knowing which of your experiments can be shared with the world—and which wisely set aside. But pretty much you do know—there is definitely the story equivalent of a cake with a sunken, soggy middle! Or where you have used the literary equivalent of salt, when the recipe clearly called for sugar. 
Coming back to the library post though, I do know what the blogger was getting at—that perhaps some of the adult writers were jumping on the kids/YA bandwagon, since that is seen as one of the "hot" area right now. But then again, perhaps because it's "hot" currently, some of the writers felt they could finally justify taking time out from their adult writing to try out the kids/YA idea they'd had waiting in the wings for some time? Who knows?
As I said in my comment on "Should Authors Experiment", I feel that the really important thing is to follow "the calling of my heart" in terms of what I want to write, rather than trying to catch/follow a trend for commercial reasons. I suspect that if I tried that I would find the writing process pretty soulless—and the end product might well read the same way! So I'm going to try and stick with writing what I love and hope that resonates with enough readers to allow me to keep on doing it.
But I love many different kinds of books, so I am going to be trying my hand at new styles of storytelling from time to time. After all, as I also said in my comment, one thing I am quite sure of is that I don't want to keep writing the same book over and over again!
So thems my thoughts—but what about you? Do you have an opinion on any of these matters as a reader, a writer yourself, or even a keen home cook?
