In the past two weeks I have been humbled/lucky or maybe my talent won out (nah, it’s not that!) seeing quite a few pieces published. From erotica, to an essay about a recent survey on the good and bad or pornography (I’ll let you guess how the survey skewed, for or against and who was most at fault) to a satirical/naughty/scifi jaunt, to my usual round of blogs, and selling a bunch more of the various children’s books I am the writer of, I managed to get up or publish a bunch ‘o stuff in the past few weeks, all of it I am very proud of.
Now, I have no idea if you write more than one kind of thang. If you do, wonderful. Knock yourself out. Furrow ahead. Have at it. All my best to you. But, if you are like me and happen to work a more diverse oeuvre, than I’d say go forth and multiply, publish as much divergent stuff as you can. Enjoy your varied output. Writing this way has done nothing but make me a better writer and has saw me gain the small amount of traction I have.
Again, not every writer dips his or her toe in different depths of water. And again, this is perfectly fine. You can’t push yourself to write stuff that’s just not in you. Ok, strike that… you can push yourself, and in doing so you might find some things about your writing that surprises you. Mainly, that you can push yourself to try other kinds of writing. But unless you are open to trying or might be one the gifted few scribes who does everything well–and I ain’t one of them by a long shot–you’ll probably gravitate time and again to that which you like or are most comfortable with.
Which again, is perfectly fine and suits many a writer.
But if you have tickled the idea of giving some type of writing a try that you have never tried or if you find stuff is pouring out of you that you never expected, I say go with it. This pours-out-of-you-that-you-never-expected stuff usually comes to writers who have never tried erotica but are suddenly taken with getting some wild and naughty words down, surprising themselves that they have the ability to write so dirty.
I see this all the time with budding erotica writers.
(To this end, if you want to read a fantastically naughty tale that covers this kind of ‘oh-my-God-I-can’t-be-thinking-this-but-it’s-changing-my-career’ kind of story, I refer you to Ann Rice, writing as Ann Rampling, and her book Belinda.
I say, let the stuff come, whatever it is. Different than what you usually write, by all means, Same, sure. A little to the left of your usual, ok. I just know that I have found some success and a sure amount of pleasure in diversity. And there are plenty of places that do indeed published cross-genre work.
Remember, you cannot be it, whatever it is that you want to be, if you restrict it.
