Right about now is normally the time we here at SVP take a summer hiatus. I have a big fat book due in a few months and am determined to have a complete first draft by the end of the summer, and thinking about marketing and promotion is SO antithetical to getting a first draft down. Plus, the kids are home from school, vacations are taken, and publishing practically shuts down for July and August.* Clearly life moves at a slower pace in summer.
However this year, instead of going all radio silent on you, I thought I'd share some posts on craft. I can talk about writing craft and processes without yanking myself out of the first draft mindset. Plus, not only is writing craft directly tied into our Favorite Piece of Marketing Advice, quite a number of you expressed interest in talking about craft, so we're going to give it a try.
(For those of you who aren't excited about that prospect, I DO have a couple of guest posts coming up, an interview with an industry insider about marketing and promotion and an interview with a very cool author. Coming soon!)
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The truth is, I am a sucker for voice. That is the one thing that can pull me into a book faster than anything. It’s nice to have character development and narrative drive show up at some point, but honestly? If the voice is strong enough, I’ll read just about anything. If a book has all of those? I’m in love.
And I’m not the only one. At conferences and in interviews, time and again I’ve heard editors say they are looking for a great voice. The thing is, everything else—plotting and characterization tools—can be taught. Voice must ooze up from the very core of the author herself and because of that, takes time to develop.
The problem is, voice is difficult to define. It’s one of those I-know-it-when-I-see-it kinds of things. It can also, like a favorite fragrance we’ve worn for years, be impossible for us to detect in ourselves. How then do we recognize it? Work on it? Strengthen it?
Some people claim you don’t have to find your voice because it hasn't gone anywhere; since it's part of you, it’s always there. That may well be true for some people. However, I also think we can lose our voice or become disconnected from it, either through misuse or because we’ve had it workshopped right out of us, or the (false!) belief that our true voice isn’t valid or unique enough. Also, I think a number of writer's are drawn to writing precisely because they haven't been able to find a voice in real life, so they turn to writing to say what needs to be said and learning to do that can take time. So some writers do need to go in search of their true voice; others may only need to excavate or re-discover theirs. I suspect this may be especially true when writing stories for kids—we have to be able to reconnect with our child’s voice.
Of course, that brings us to the question of what exactly is voice?
For me, voice encompasses not only the words a writer chooses and how they string their
13 Comments on Finding Your Wild and Precious Voice, last added: 7/5/2011
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An interesting take on this challenging issue. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
What a great post! I'm printing it out and taking it with me on vacation to ponder. While I reconnect with nature, I'll reconnect with my voice...
Love your practical research-based approach to finding voice, particularly the one about looking for commonalities in favorite books. FANTASTIC advice! Keep going with that first draft. xo
Thank you for breaking radio silence to give us this terrific post.
Thank you for this!
I lost my voice after my second book. It was after I went on a reading binge of every how-to book I could get my hands on. It's one of the dangers of being a newbie writer and trying to follow every single rule out there. It took me writing a book in first person to get it back. For some reason, it made me fearless and I had fun with it. Now I try to approach every project that way.
Great post. Thanks.
GREAT post! So many wonderful ideas on how to find and explore and write in your own personal, powerful voice. Which everybody has, but can be hard to harness and recognize. Thank you!
I also highly recommend the book "Finding Your Voice" by Les Edgerton.
Very helpful right now!
(And you are right about July and August...that is when my book sold last year!)
Love SVP!
Shelley
Excellent post! Voice is such an elusive creature. I hope you don't mind if I share a few of your insights with a writing workshop I'm supposed to give later this summer...I especially love the potato metaphor. :)
You’re so welcome, Andrea!
Constance, have a wonderful time reconnecting with both nature and your voice! I always have some of my best writing epiphanies on vacation!
Irene, it is very eye opening to look at all that and find the common threads! And thanks for the wish for luck on the 1st draft. Since officially declaring hiatus, I have doubled my daily output. ☺
You are so very welcome, Tena and Caroline!
L.E., yes! Exactly! It so necessary to do that, consume all that information, but then we need to take some time and process it and play with it and make it our own. And hurray for fearless and fun! I love when I can get to that place.
I have not heard of that book, Kimberly, but I am off to look it up right now!
Hi Shelley! So glad the timing of the post worked out so well! And belated congrats on last year’s sale!
Sarah, voice is SO elusive! And absolutely feel free to use what you need for your workshop! Just be sure to credit Barbara with the potato metaphor, because it was her brilliance, not mine. ☺
Here's hoping we all find our inner potato! ;-D
Inspiring as always - I've copied this into my Writing Tips file for further pondering.
How close, would you say, is our actual speaking voice and our written voice? I notice that when I am talking or writing to certain friends my 'voice' shifts up a gear and my vocab gets more fun and unusual. It's like they 'draw' a certain voice out of me.
In one experiment I wrote a chapter of a book to the friend who draws the most animated voice out of me in real life - to see if it would work on the page. Don't know if it was any good, but it did help me maintain the same style.
weirdness...I thought I posted a comment last night but now it's gone. Maybe I was tired and misspelled the goofy word below.
No biggie--just wanted to say thanks for another great post. I agree that voice is so important.
I'm getting ready to start on a second draft, and one of the things I've been thinking about is editing and "voice". I had an experience several years ago where I ended up somehow editing out too much of the "odd duck" quirkiness and ended up with a book missing much of the voice. I'd like to think that I'm better at writing and editing at this point, but that experience does stick with me. Any advice would be helpful!