They say everyone has a book in them. I've always taken that to mean we all have a life story that could be told - but writing fiction is not the same. Life experiences are important but they are not the whole thing.
So -if you were unpublished, just taking the plunge, what might you choose? What you like to read? What you think you are suited for? What will make money?
All of the above?
I think the big thing is that you enjoy what you write, because IMO it shows.
I experimented with a variety of genres before I settled on romantic suspense. Even so my early books are different from the most recent Riviera Series as my publisher wanted something lighter - holiday reading.
The WIP? Don't ask. Really. I have no idea what genre it is - probably still romantic suspense as there is romance and crime/suspense but there is a lot else besides, Main thing is, although it is slow, I am enjoying it.
It is natural, I think, to squint occasionally at other genres and wonder. Particularly if you have read something good and/or interesting by another author.
A number of romance authors are making a very successful transition to cosy crime at the moment. And I admit to temptation.
Theoretically I could write historical/saga - World War Two, as that is my academic thread, and I do have a completed WW2 family saga in the bottom drawer that twice went through the RNA's New Writers' Scheme but didn't find a publisher - possibly because I didn't push it hard enough. Having done it, and proved I could, I didn't want that to be my future - although you will have noticed that the war does get into my contemporary plots - and the WIP is no exception.
Having just read K J Charles Death in the Spires which I enjoyed very much and which is an unsolved murder mystery with a strong slant of the dark academia genre, I am now re-reading M L Rio's If We Were Villains (I am drawing the line at Donna Tart's The Secret History. Not going back there, good and clever as it is. Don't have the stamina any more.)
Of course, now I am wondering ...
I'm an academic, with the letters to prove it., I have a thing for books, libraries and Gothic architecture - all of which I understand are ingredients - and I have a much professed desire to write something Gothic (is that actually another genre?) I don't think I can reproduce the hot house atmosphere of the DA genre though, and despite my qualifications I certainly don't have the scholarship to twist into the plot, And I am strictly red brick, not dreaming spires so that is probably a no.
But it is tantalising...
Write what you know. Maybe that's write what you enjoy? Maybe the knowing bit is knowing your limitations?
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