What about Branding?

Once you're published, you hear a lot these days about "branding," about getting settled into and known in a single genre. No one talked about branding when I came into the field forty years ago. But then my peers and I almost always started out under the guidance of a single editor, and that editor usually did his or her own shaping of our careers. If you succeeded with your first novel or your first picture book or your first work of nonfiction, your editor was very apt to want more of the same next time around. The result was that we usually did start with one genre and stay there. All my early work was in middle-grade novels, and my first editor had little interest in seeing anything else from me.

A shift that he did support was to a trilogy of books on writing, What's Your Story? A Young Person's Guide to Writing Fiction; A Writer's Story: From Life to Fiction and Our Stories: A Fiction Workshop for Young Writers. I was a writing teacher as well as a writer and the how-tos of writing were what I knew, so it was a logical step and a reasonably successful one.

I only began to be able to experiment further when the unwritten, unspoken rules of the publishing world shifted, and it became possible to publish with more than one or two houses. Then the door to real experimentation finally stood open.

Was I impeded by being confined to my middle-grade novels (and that writing trilogy) in my early years? I was sometimes annoyed by the limitation, but I suspect I profited by it. I was getting grounded in the novel. I was also getting known as novelist.

Now few writers feel confined to a single publisher, nor does a publisher invest in shaping each writer's career. So unless you have an agent guiding your choices, you are pretty much on your own deciding when--and if--branching into new territory is a good idea.

My own opinion is that, once you are established--and established, I acknowledge, isn't always easy to define--branching into new genres is the best way to sustain a long career. It gives you a chance to try out what you didn't think you could do, to discover new topics and new genres that interest you and to develop new strengths.

I have now published in just about every genre in the juvenile field except graphic novels. I've written novelty books, board books, picture books, early readers--both fiction and nonfiction, novellas for younger readers, middle grade and young adult fiction. For what it's worth, I suppose I've become my own "brand." I continue to survive--financially, I mean--without having to do other work on the side precisely because I keep myself open, keep experimenting, keep looking for new opportunities and new challenges. Editors sometimes come to me wanting a certain kind of work they have seen me do before. And I feel privileged, having just celebrated my 74th birthday, to still be working, to still be publishing.

My advice for those who come behind me? Don't play it safe. Try something you've never done before. You might crash and burn. If you do, no harm done. You put it on the shelf and try something else. But there is a good chance that you'll discover another kind of writing you love to do, another kind of work you can do.

So . . . keep challenging yourself. Keep learning to write what you never thought you could. It's the best way I know to stay fresh. And if writing for young readers isn't fresh, what possible use can it be?

Leaving your "brand" behind and trying something new may not be the key to instant success, but it is certainly the key to a long and fruitful career.