The keynote speaker at the Write To Publish Conference was Dr. Dennis Hensley, director of the professional writing program at Taylor University, Ft. Wayne IN. This is not a well-known university, and I suspect Doc Hensley is not a household word in the USA, but he is well-known in Christian writing circles, and his program is highly thought off.

This is the third time I’ve heard him as keynote speaker at a Christian writers conference, including at this very conference in 2004. So I was a little worried that he would speak one of the same keynote addressed I’d heard before. Not that I remembered all of them so well that I couldn’t stand to hear them again, but it was a concern.

However, Doc Hensley gave a different speech than at any of the other times I’d heard him speak. He talked about being a writer, rather than writing what you want to write. He told of a time a couple of decades ago when he learned that romance novels were selling well, and gaining more and more market share. He did not feel particularly called to write romances, but he said, “I am a writer,” and began writing romances under a pseudonym. Not sure how many he wrote, but all sold fairly well.

Then he told about another time, when someone needed a certain type of article—or maybe it was about a subject he didn’t normally write on. But he said, “I am a writer,” and wrote the article and received payment.

His point was to diversify. Find out what type of writing is needed, and fill the void with your writing. This somewhat flys in the face of the conventional wisdom one hears at these conferences, that finding a good niche/genre and staying in it is the best thing. Your fans will want to have more of the same type of writing. So if you are writing thrillers, the conventional wisdom goes, don’t shift to cozy mysteries and expect your audience to embrace your new book. If you write romances don’t add horror to your portfolio.

In this conventional wisdom, diversification using pseudonyms can help, but can also distract you from writing the next book in your primary genre that your fans are clamoring for. Instead of two books in genre a year, you might only produce one, leaving fans disappointed.

Of course, you actually have to have fans for this to be a concern. I’m a ways from that at this point. I think Doc Hensley’s advice is good. Since I happen to have been doing that already, of course I’d think it good. I guess I’ll continue to write engineering articles and environmental articles and the occasional poetry article, even while trying to finish In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People and e-self-publish Documenting America and add the next volume to that genre and perhaps add the occasional poem to my portfolio.

Somewhere, sometime, something is going to click.