I had the honour of being the guest speaker at a literary lunch held by the Society of Women Writers at the NSW State Library on Wednesday this week.
I spoke about being a playwright for young adults, a type of writer the Vice President called 'an endangered species'. There certainly aren't many people who specialise in this field. This is something I highlighted in my speech s a positive aspect of my writing. As a writer, I tried to find a gap in the market, then set out to fill that gap. I stressed the fact that writers should write for profit as well as pleasure, that we are business people as well as artists. 'Art for art's sake' is all well and good, but I still have to buy groceries.
I also love writing plays for schools, and this is something else I addressed in my talk. I do get asked, 'When are you going to write a real play?' - meaning when am I going to write a play for adults. To me, there are wonderful challenges and pleasures writing for the audiences I know and love. So the answer is, 'Not any time soon.'
Mind you, I never say never. Ideas come to writers at the oddest times, and some ideas are better for a primary school audience or a senior secondary school audience. Some ideas are better for an adult audience. It's often the case that an idea really grabs me and almost demands to be written. And it just happens to be that those ideas are the ones for the schools market.
Now, of course, I am becoming known in that market. It becomes good in a business sense to follow those ideas first.
This week, aside from the talk on Wednesday, I've been finishing the first draft of The Singing Stones, the fantasy story for the ESL market. My biggest challenge is naming the country in which it is set.
To contradict what I've said earlier, I've also started work on an adaptation of Mirror, Mirror as a radio play for adults. I do try to do some 'research and development' writing when I get time, and I've always thought this material is perfect for the medium of radio. I just wish there were more hours in my working week, as I do have to buy the groceries, so 'R&D' often has to make way for a pressing deadline. Or canteen duty.
One final note: it looks as if my website will be going live - not just the homepage but the whole site - early next week, thanks to the vision and talent of the designer, my stepdaughter Tess Lloyd, and the skills of Zoe and her staff at zfweb. I'm very excited by my virtual real estate and my cyberspace homebase.
