Being a multi-genre author, by guest-blogger Lucinda E. Clarke

As promised in my last post, here guest-blogger Lucinda E. Clarke talks about some of the challenges of being a multi-genre author, and will be of interest to both readers and fellow writers.

Once upon a time, in the age of the dinosaurs when people actually paid me to write, I was commissioned by the South African Broadcasting Service (SABC), firstly for radio and later television programmes. The subjects were as diverse as splitting the atom, how to be an entrepreneur, how to fashion a toothbrush from twigs and how to feed a family of 10 on a piece of ground the size of a door.

I became a fountain of knowledge and a master of nothing. Almost any subject that comes up in everyday conversation I can think, "I once wrote a programme about that."

These were my first thoughts when Graham very kindly asked me to scribble a few words about working on more than one genre and I guess he is referring to books. But let me add that to write for radio you have to think in sounds, actors use character names frequently so you know who is talking and you can fly to Mars and plunge down the Marianas Trench for nothing using equipment found in most kitchens.

Moving to television was a huge learning curve. Now, I had a budget to consider (even stock shots can cost a small fortune), a director to please and a cameraman to instruct.

When I started writing my own books as my own boss, I revelled in the freedom. No longer did I have to time out scripts, locations and car crashes were once again free; I was in charge. What I hadn’t expected was to start again right at the bottom of the ladder.

My first effort was my "sensitive" memoir, in that it was true and revolved around my family. For this I used a pen name and waited until members of the older generation had passed on. It was easy to write physically, if not as easy mentally, as my life has been somewhat bizarre and traumatic.

 My next effort was a full-length novel – could I do it? A big step into the unknown. I based it very loosely on my own experiences of arriving to live in Africa, only I took it a step further and put my heroine through hell – what fun!

 The wrinkles in the mirror told me time was running out, so with memory fading, I rushed to record my days of media work in two volumes – it got too long for the one I planned – and suddenly I had 4 books out there.

I could have published the last 3 in my real name but it seemed too much effort to open another Facebook page, Twitter account and all the rest, so Lucinda it remained. Some very kind and possibly deluded readers liked Amie so much they urged me to write more and I’m scribbling book 5, but in the meantime, while spring cleaning under the bed, I found an old manuscript – Unhappily Ever After, a comedy set in Fairyland. I scraped the dust off and revamped it.

The weird thing is most of my media writing was comedy – many programmes were educational and I firmly believe you can impart information more easily if you make it fun. So, I enjoyed completing my comedy book – it’s very much along the lines of Tom Sharpe and I’d be tempted to write more but for one large problem: comedy has changed and to be honest I don’t understand what makes younger people laugh these days. There’s little humour in clever word play, embarrassing situations and innuendo.  I’m tempted to follow Cinderella as a newly divorcee, but I’m not sure the sales would warrant it.

Promotion across boundaries? A nightmare. I couldn’t see myself writing memoir after memoir about my hectic life; the first three said most of what there was to say and that was an end to it. OK, so I have a free reader magnet book about my riding school in Botswana, but it’s only a short book.

Overall, I’m out of sync with that’s "in". I’ve written memoirs, an old-style comedy and an adventure series – not detective books, crime novels, erotic or supernatural – but then I couldn’t stop writing if I tried, I’m hooked – a lost cause. I will write for me.

www.lucindaeclarkeauthor.com

Thank you for these insightful comments, Lucinda. I shall be continuing this theme in the next post.

My 3rd interview for eBook Showtime

I don't have favourites where my interviewees are concerned; it wouldn't be ethical and would show me in something of a poor light. However, this isn't to say that I don't have particular aspects of my guest authors that I greatly admire, and perhaps a good example is from my meeting with international best-selling author Lucinda E. Clarke, as is suggested in the opening of my introduction:

"To say that today's guest author is a bit of an all-rounder may be something of an understatement..."

Lucinda's done journalism, screenwriting, novels and memoirs, with eclectic mixes of humour, tragedy and pathos. I mean, how brilliant is that? She sounded just my sort of writer, which is why I jumped at the chance of meeting her.

But, as I'd already learned where online interviews are concerned, technology is all very well just so long as it's firing on all four cylinders, which is often not the case. I was in the north of England and Lucinda, on Spain's east coast, was only (only?) around 1,500 miles away, so not exactly Earth to Venus, was it? But I lost count of the times the audio got zapped or went off on a journey of its own, leaving us with little picture jerks and long freezes (less painful than it sounds). And every time that happened we had to stop and reconnect, do the pre-recording setups once again, and continue where we left off. I had almost 20GB of useless video footage.

Would you believe that it took three months to get finished? Now, you can't tell from the final cut that we are a quarter of a year older from beginning to end, can you? I'm joking! Actually, what we did was re-record it all again from scratch and this final session was done in just one take. Its success makes the headaches and frustrations pale into insignificance.

At the end of the day, it all made for getting to know each other whilst rattling on about the book business and putting the world to rights. I particularly enjoyed when Lucinda took me on a tour of her home and from out on the balcony could be seen palm trees, orange groves and, sizzling in the distance, the Mediterranean Sea. The heat was bringing me out in a sweat, even though here it was barely 20 degrees Celsius.   

In future posts I shall deal with my take on writing in more than one genre, and the next post will feature Lucinda, as guest blogger, telling how she came to be such a versatile writer. I'm looking forward to it.

Here's the interview

and here is Lucinda's website.