I have read it to be said that most writers work on a small handful of major themes over their careers. A couple few main ideas that they explore, even if through various avenues.
I don't mean writers who rarely venture out of their familiar genres. And I'm sure we could compile an impressive list of eclectic authors whose work runs across a whole host of disparate themes.
Yet, for instance, take Asimov, one of the most prolific, expansive writers I can think of off the top of my head. Was not an overarching theme of much of his work the exploration of intelligence?
Look at Gaiman, a writer who--seems to me, at least--has reached the pinnacle of literary success: the ability to explore any idea in any form and expect it to reach a receptive audience. Perhaps even he might have a limited, though reliable, collection of themes--Curiosity, Loss, Uncertainty, Natural and Supernatural Wonder.
I've been writing for a little over a score now. It seems that most of my work--prose, poetry, even journaling--deal with the themes of Dream and Fate and Time. Many of my pieces--early on as well as recent--continue to explore ideas such as fantasy and reality, predestination, memory, expectation, the past and the future and the presence abiding between and beyond. I anticipate delving even further into such realms of wonder with stories and poems I have yet to write.
Nevertheless, since studying library science and becoming a school librarian, not only does it appear that much of my work is aimed at younger and younger readers, but it also seems that another theme keeps turning up in my own humble collection: that of information literacy.
Again and again, the notion of locating, evaluating, and using information shines brightly through in the pieces I have been developing lately. It's exhilarating--also a wee bit frightening--to consider that I might be expanding my literary horizons.
So it seems, for me, uncharted territory beckons.
