I love music and I’ve played the violin since I was seven years old. I’m now pretty good at it and I’ve often wondered whether I could have been a professional musician IF I had concentrated on music only, forsaking all other pursuits, and IF I had chosen a different instrument. Yes, I play and love the violin. But what if I was really “meant” to be a cellist, or bassist or oboe player? What if the problem hasn’t been commitment or even talent, but that simply, I made the wrong choice?
Now let’s think about teaching. In the past, I had concentrated on teaching school age children. I then started to focus more on teenagers. For a while, my specialty seemed to be teenagers with learning difficulties. I still do teach teenagers when I’m running my workshops in Cambodia. But back in the UK, my teaching now is more focused on the university and post-graduate level. I think I’ve worked well with all these ages. I certainly know I’ve always enjoyed any teaching, wherever I’ve done it. But after all these years, should I be choosing to establish myself more firmly on one educational level? At the moment I seem to be settling into University teaching more and more, but what am I giving up by doing that?
And of course, and perhaps most importantly, there’s my writing. I write novels. I write poetry. I occasionally write short stories and I have several plays out making the rounds. Lately, I’ve started to write more and more articles for magazines. And there’s the blog. I know many writers write across genres and I have always felt that one sort of writing nourishes and expands the other. But when I take the time to reflect on it all, I still find myself wondering what if? What if I only wrote novels? What if I was purely a poet? If I dedicated myself solely to the theatre, would my name now be in lights on the marque of The Royal Court?
If someone else was asking me these questions, I know what my answers would be. You write what you need to write in the way you need to write it. The material dictates the format. Don’t fit yourself into a straight jacket of genre. And I know that whenever I think about the prospect of leaving poetry behind, or walking away from the theatre, or never writing another novel, my stomach sinks. And yet, I keep revisiting this question and wondering what I may be giving up by being this jack-of-all-trades.
Please, could you tell me what you think? I’d love some honest advice and new perspectives.
Well, being the Queen of the Jack-of-all-trades school, I think you know what I think.
For a time I thought I would be a wildlife vet. I worked in a university research lab where the woman I worked with was studying follicle size with an ultrasound machine in an attempt to establish a simple way for artificial inseminators to improve their chances of success with cattle. Everyone in that lab was obsessed with the size of follicles in cows’ ovaries. That was all people talked about. If the conversation veered in any direction it would be to the uterus of a cow.
This scared the shit out of me. It was the mid-80s, I was at a university in a very politcal place, where lots of exciting things were happening- these folks didn’t care.
That was when I knew – I am not cut out for any kind of specialisation. We get one life, and for me I want to stretch every single corner of mine. I know there are benfits in specilisation, but for me it just can’t work. And I suspect it is the same for you.
Wow. What a fabulous and helpful perspective! Thanks.Cows ovaries? Really?
Sue, you said it:
‘You write what you need to write in the way you need to write it. The material dictates the format.’
But finding a publisher for cross-genre material can be a problem. My agent has just fought this battle. He succeeded in selling my book to a small, entrepreneurial publisher, but in the current, risk-averse market, corporate publishers see anything that doesn’t fit into a neat marketing box as risky.
So yes, write what you have to write. For most of us, it’s the only way. But however good the result, it doesn’t always mean there will always be a market for it.
Geoffrey: You’ve hit the nail on the head . Yes, we write what feels right, but having it work in the marketplace is an entirely different thing. I am lucky enough to have a publisher who publishes much of what I write, regardless of the genre. But they are small and so my earnings and readership remains small. believe me, I’m hugely thankful for what I have! But I know that what I write keeps me out of the mainstream publishing houses. An agent recently told me as much as well. So I do, from time to time, wonder…
Thanks for stopping by!
I love open-ended questions about genre. I also started piano at five, gave up as a young adult, and recently had my maestro say, Why didn’t you do something with your piano? Now, with a daughter headed towards a musical career (opera, no less!), I realise that when I was her age, I just wanted to write, or I wanted to write more than just piano.
No regrets, and I’m still studying the piano. But writing – yes I’ve also crossed genres, having written a commercial women’s novel when I was in that ‘mood’ and veering away (temporarily) from literary fiction, which is so hard to sell. I also work with a small flexible publisher, who is bringing out my story collection next year – I’m also so grateful for that. I realise that for the corporate world, I’m nuts, but for anyone who is real, we know we have to venture out, explore, fail, find. It all makes sense. Best wishes!
Thanks so much for your comment, Chillcat. You clearly are traveling along a similar path as mine, and with a similar mindset. Yes, the commercial world, and our bank managers, usually think we’re crazy. And sometimes I think we are too – hence this blog post. But it is really helpful to get this sort of understanding feedback.