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