Who I am as a Writer

Jennifer Crusie wrote a great article in this month’s Romance Writers Report. It started out being about finding the right agent, and it ended up being a guide for career planning. Some of the questions listed in the article were:

1. What are your influences?
2. What was the first story you knew you had to tell?
3. What are you writing next?
4. What does that have to do with getting an agent?
5. Why do you want to be published?
6. What kind of material environment do you need in order to flourish?

And so on. The idea was that, once you could truly define yourself as a writer, only then could you plan a long-term career and find the right guidance.

Some of my friends, Margery, Kacey, Katie, and Vicki read a recent proposal of mine and all of them hit upon something major–that in this proposal they heard my true writer’s voice. Do you know how amazing that is? How liberating it is? :bounce: All this time I’ve been worried that I needed to take a chill pill, to rein in my reckless nature, when just the opposite was true. With this last proposal, I let ‘er rip. I had the most fun I’ve ever had in writing a book. Okay, there were also moments when I was ready to rip my fingernails out and scream bloody murder, but that was when I got off-track. For the most part, I LOVED this book. I wanted to write it no matter what. I was excited about it. And all because I let my writer’s natural voice just go nuts.

I started looking at another book I’m planning to revise for the American Title II contest, sponsored by Romantic Times. I decided–what the heck. I’m going to entertain myself and uncage my voice again. Once I did that, the book started to improve vastly. I think this can be said for everyone. No two “voices” are alike. And your natural voice is the one that comes out when you have a magical scene, one that writes itself. You know, the one where dinner is burning, your kids are screaming, “MOM, she hit me!,” and you don’t care a bit. Because you MUST FINISH THIS SCENE.

Go back and read your own writing. Do you see that scene, the one where you reread it and thought, “D*mn, I’m good! Did I write that?”

That’s your voice. Now go finish the rest of the book and make it yours.