With the amount of people telling novice writers that they need to pick a niche to be successful, you’d think no writers ever “made it” if they wrote in multiple genres. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I’ve written about several multi-niche writers on this site, from freelance writers who dabble in multiple niches and are well-known in the freelance writing world, to famous authors whose works have been adapted into film.
Here’s yet another author who wrote in various genres and made the literature world richer for it. Isaac Asimov was a professor at the University of Boston. But teaching Biochemistry isn’t all he focused on. He also wrote or edited over 500 books and wrote upwards of 90,000 letters and postcards. He was an incredibly prolific writer who did not stay stuck in one genre. Ask yourself: would he have been this prolific if he only ever wrote about one thing?
Asimov wrote several books in the science fiction genre. He also wrote mystery novels, short stories (both science fiction and fantasy), and he edited several anthologies in various genres. And he didn’t stick with just fiction, either: he wrote books on mathematics, general science, astronomy, chemistry and biochemistry, earth sciences, biology, physics, and history.
He wrote about The Bible, about literature, and he wrote things that don’t fit in neat genre boxes, too. He also wrote science fiction essays and didn’t shy away from writing letters and postcards to his readers. To find a complete listing of his works, click here.
Asimov is just one more example of how when you have multiple interests, your best bet is to pursue all of them. Not all at the same time, of course—there are only so many hours in a day, and you do need to pick something to get started. But if you’re a MultiTalented Writer with many interests, there’s no hard and fast rule about only writing in one genre or niche, despite what the “experts” might say.
So write. Just write. Every day. In any and all genres and niches your heart desires. The more you write, the better writer you’ll become.
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