Kendal: A year ago while at a conference in Ottawa, an author at my dinner table gave me a piece of advice that I am very thankful for. She said “To find what works for you, you need to do something different.”
 
At the time I didn’t give it much thought. But now, over a year later — and 4 completed stories later — I have tried:
Ø      1st pov voice – Which I have to say…I love!
Ø      I am currently trying for the first time ever, to plot from front to end instead of winging it. I am only 25% into the story, so it’s too early to see if this works for me. FYI: I’ll be doing a future Smack Down on this topic wasn’t I have completed it.
Ø      I have tired and had some success in moving from Adult Sweet contemporary to Erotica contemporary now in Young Adult contemporary.
 
I have to say, looking back I am excited to try something new. Maybe Sci-fi? Maybe middle grade? Who knows?! That’s the beauty of being an author. I can create anything I want too, I just have to have the guts to try something new!
 
April, what is your thinking? Am I wrong to jump around and not stay focused in one area and hone my skills in one genre or style? What has been your experience?
 
April: Excellent smackdown topic because I completely DISAGREE that this is a good approach for a published author.
 
If you’re out there to have fun or aren’t published yet—sure, have at it. Do everything and anything under the sun. Right now, I have four books ready for publication and one that’s on the verge (one of those is young adult which I wrote in 2007—for my daughter). All of them are romance—two are paranormal and two are contemporary.
 
I’m not published and I’m taking this fall to do one last project for my son ( a middle grade book that I hope he loves) before I do become published. Because I have a very aggressive plan. I want a backlog of books in my pocket so that next year when I really begin hitting the agents and publishers, I can have more than one book published in my first year.
If my middle grade and young adult get published one day—fantastic. But those books are really for my kids—I have time now to write them before I’m totally focused on romance. That’s my passion and where I will completely focus. Immediate plans are to get a backlog and develop a large readership. The faster I can do that (and you can’t do that well if you’re skipping around), the faster I can begin devoting more time to writing.
 
Then, once I’ve established myself, I can try new and different things.
 
But my immediate plans — replace my income so I can write more. I can’t do that if I can’t keep a readership.
 
(Side note… ahem… if the middle book or young adult were published first and were successful. I’d really work that for all it’s worth. I would love to be able to reach that crowd. I’m not opposed to it at all if someone were interested in seeing my stories ;>  )
 
LOL. My question to you Kendal though???? What do you hope to accomplish in your career and how is jumping around helping you? Ultimately, that’s what we must think about—what is our end results and will it be worth it to take those risks and chances?

Kendal: You pose a very good question. I do want to achieve publication (or the road to getting published which in my world means YA suspense 1st pov complete and then shortly afterwards (end of January is the goal) is to have another YA complete. BUT in the mean time I can’t completely ditch my epublishing shorter erotica side. I’m not doing the erotica/epublishing for the money (side note: 4 published ebooks and zero $ received to date), but I do it because I enjoy it. I think at this point that is as important. It’s allowing me to continue to improve my writing skills.

BUT you do have me thinking that I need to sit down and figure out a better game plan to hook me an agent lol.

What is everyone’s thoughts on this?