A good fit

Be happy in your writing skin, says Adrian Magson

For many writers it’s all too easy to get settled in one genre, either because your subject matter matches your interests, or you feel you might not succeed in a genre you never tried before. Both good points. It’s tough enough to get started without having doubts about trying something different.

Whatever you do in life (if you are fortunate enough to have a choice), you should feel comfortable. Or, as the French put it so elegantly, be happy in your skin. If you want to switch genres as a writer, it’s essential to be comfortable doing so, otherwise you’ll feel as if you’re writing against the grain, which does nothing to aid the creative process.

I’ve experienced both, although my preference has always been for writing crime and spy fiction. Many years ago in the century BB (before books) I wrote romantic and relationship fiction and features for women’s magazines. It wasn’t my natural comfort zone but I wanted to write something and earn money doing so, and the most immediate way I saw at the time was to write short stories.

I won’t pretend it was easy (ask anyone who writes short fiction), and there were definite moments where I sucked at it. But the ideas floodgates were open and I took full advantage and eventually had some 400 items published here and overseas. Happy in my skin? Yes!

In between the shorts I plugged away at writing books. The first few died before they got to the starting gate. Not so much a learning curve, more a falling off a cliff. That they didn’t get past any of the agents and editors unfortunate enough to see them was probably a good thing, and it was a long time before I got my first book acceptance letter. But the refreshing part throughout was finding that the act of switching genres – and different audiences – was like putting on a different hat each time. That mental trick worked for me. It meant I could sit down knowing that I had to have a specific thought process in mind instead of wandering off-course.

In short, the writer was the same but what went down on paper was not.

It all comes down to knowing your markets. If you don’t know them, you have to learn them, which means research. With magazines, I knew what my mother liked, as she was an avid fan, so in a sense I was writing for her. But I still read a lot of them to get an idea of what was acceptable or not.

For books, I’d been hoovering them up as fast as I could get them since the age of eight, so I had a good understanding of what was required in terms of subject matter and characters. With both, I also learned that the markets can change, which you must never forget.

It was probably my lack of experience that meant I didn’t even consider that stepping into such unknown territory – from 2.000-word mag projects to book projects of 90,000 words – was a move too far. But ignorance is bliss and in the end it worked out just fine.

What undoubtedly helped, even in my ignorance, was being willing to try something different, to meet a challenge. I’d experienced several day job changes before, which meant going out and doing something very different each time and being out of my comfort zone, so why not apply the same thought to writing? I like to think I have an enquiring mind and an inventive one, and enjoy the physical/mental application of writing stuff down, so going with that thought process seemed a natural thing to do.

The same approach led me to switch within a genre; still crime but historical instead of contemporary. Different times, attitudes, perspectives, even language. The setting, 1960s France, meant paying special attention to terminology and forgetting all about computers, mobile phones, Netflix and technology-aswe-now-know-it. But that was hugely liberating and refreshing, and I’d been to school in France, so why not give it a go?

What I didn’t do was to read another author’s work and assume I could write that. Rather, I thought I could write something like that, maybe different or better – or at least try. So my own ideas were essential rather than re-hashing something already in existence.

A by-product of this was that I try to avoid reading, say, spy thrillers while I’m writing one. I didn’t want to pick up or retain in my head another writer’s voice or style because I wanted to develop my own. I still observe that discipline today.

In the end, after many stops and starts, I’ve found where I feel happy in my writing skin. And that makes work so much easier.