A Writer's Voice - What is it and Why Does it Matter?

Hi guys,

 

 

 

The wonderful cover art was obtained from SelfPubBookCovers:

SelfPubBookCovers.com/KimDingwall

Well The Wolves of War went out just on a week ago on kindle {and two days later after much hair pulling, wailing and gnashing of teeth, on CreateSpace!}And so I find myself with a little free time on my hands to blog.

This time I thought I'd turn my attention to voice. That almost indefinable something that gets mentioned a lot by writers, and hardly ever explained. But here I thought I'd set out what “voice” is in my view, and why it matters so much.

For me the simplest definition of your voice as a writer, is that it's who you are as a writer. Many people tend to define voice as mostly about prose. Your style of writing. To me it's much more than that. It is the gestalt of everything you are when you put finger to keyboard. So it includes your prose. The way you express your thoughts in writing. And of course it includes things like active and passive writing, purple prose, sentence length and structure and all the rest. But it goes much further than that.

It includes things like word choice and phrases you use. So note that before I used the term “finger to keyboard”. Why? Because it's more representative of current writing methods? Maybe. But also because it sounded better to me to use it there than the more familiar term, “pen to paper”. That is a part of my voice. Where and when I choose to use a more common phrase and where I prefer a one off.

Voice of course goes well beyond this. It impacts on your character creation. What are they like as people? What do you want to say about them? Does it matter to you as a writer if they are pretty people? Good people? What flaws and qualities do you want to write about them? Voice is there in your world build too. What parts of your world do you want to describe? Does architecture matter? Are you more about the detail of the world? Do you prefer instead to paint in broad brush-strokes and metaphor? You see voice in the pace of your writing. Whether you choose to use short, punchy sentences, have lots of action, and be light on description. Or if you prefer longer sentences and to lovingly linger over descriptions.

It's even there in the choice of stories a writer wants to write. Do you like sci fi or fantasy? Romance? Western? Do you want your story to be happy? An epic tragedy? A contemplation on the meaning of life?

And so in everything a writer writes, his writing voice is there. It informs and guides him in a thousand different decisions. And most important of all, those decisions are not usually either right or wrong. They are simply choices.

So if that's what voice is to me, the next obvious question is – why does it matter?

Now here I'm going to start by saying that every writer is or should be on a journey. A writer's journey as they slowly become more aware of who they are as writers, and what they like and dislike. It's not just about becoming a “better” writer, it's about becoming the writer that you want to be. It's about learning to express whatever you want to express, how it seems best to you. And it feeds into self confidence which is absolutely critical.

Many of the best writers I know and love, have very distinct voices. Voices that are so strong that you could pick up a book by one of them, and know who wrote it without needing to check the cover.

So who stands out to me? Stephen Donaldson as always with his longer sentences and detailed, lovingly crafted descriptions. And also with his underlying sadness, which shows through in all his characters and their story arcs. Against him the wonderful Clifford Simak, with his simple writing and bucolic charm. The warmth that shines through in his worlds. And the wry humour too. JRR Tolkein again with lengthy prose and detailed description like Donaldson, but also with a dated {obviously I suppose} style of prose and an almost poetic turn of phrase. And perhaps most important in his work, a clear focus on moral rights and wrongs / values. Dean R Koontz for his not so horror filled horrors where you can open the book and know before you begin reading that his heroes will do okay in the end, and that they will all be remarkable characters with bad pasts who have turned their lives around somehow to become impossibly successful, and yet are just ordinary Americans. {I admit, sometimes that gets to me a little and makes me feel inadequate. Damn – if only I'd been born into unbelievable suffering I could have grown up to become an unbelievably talented and successful artist / writer / detective etc with an utterly virtuous heart!}

Anyway the point here is not that these are good writer's voices. They are in my opinion, but that's not important. What does matter is that these writers have at some point in their journey, discovered who they are as writers. They've found their voices. And as a result they've begun writing their best work. And by best I don't mean that their work is of great literary merit. It may be, but that's not the point. Nor that it is commercially successful. Or that it will go down in the annuls of history as masterpieces. By best I mean that it is true to who they are as writers. It says what they want to say how they want to say it. It is true to them.

By contrast there are a great many writers out there, most of them new to the craft, who are determined to write the next JK Rowling or Stephen King. Not that these are bad goals to aspire to, but are they the right goals for you? Do you want to write the next schoolboy wizard or sparkly vampire? Or do you really want to write the story that's in your heart? The one that's going to emerge onto the computer screen and fill you with pride? The one that's going to be “truly yours”?

As I said at the beginning, I think every writer who is serious about writing, should be on this journey to find their voice. It is probably the most important part of a writing career.

Because of this I would simply add this to those starting out on your journey. Throw away all the writing guides you have. They may be full of wonderful words of wisdom but they are of no use to you at the start. The only book that should matter to you at the beginning in terms of your becoming the writer you should be, is the book you are writing. Instead of reading what others tell you about what to write and how to write it, write what you want to write, how you want to write it.

Yes there will come a time before you are ready to publish, when you'll need to put your work out there for opinions. And it will be hard to show your baby to others and hear criticism about its eyes being too close together. That is just another, difficult step on the journey. But if you've completed the first step in your journey, you should then be able to accept the criticisms and after the tears have dried up, step back a little and dispassionately listen to what was said and ask yourself the most important question. Is what they're saying true to what I wanted to write? Or if I do as they suggest am I betraying my vision?

That is the most important stage in a writer's development. It's hard and it takes self-confidence. But if you can achieve it. If you can hear criticism, weigh it, measure it, decide if it's right for you, and then either use it or put it away when you have to, you have moved from being a generic wannabe writer slavishly doing what other people think you should and following trends, to becoming who you want to be.

You have found your voice.

 

Cheers, Greg.

Shonky Self Promotion

Hi guys,

 

 

Just finished the first draft of Samual and sent it off to the editor, which gives me a little time to post something here.

And this time it’s a topic I haven’t dealt with before. One that is prompted by a number of events that have happened recently in my online life – not that I really have much of one of those. The shonky practices engaged in by some aspiring authors as they try to sell their books.

As many of you may know, I tend to stay away from the entire world of promotion of my work. My thought is that if I produce good books that people enjoy, then the work will sell itself. The golden rule for me is produce a good book, well edited, with a good cover and a good blurb, get it out there and then start writing the next one. And while last year I may have revised that view slightly, deciding that cover design should be outsourced to people who actually know what they're doing, I'm still mostly happy with that position. So you won't find me running advertising campaigns across Twitter or bombarding Facebook with promotions. I won't be at writer conventions flogging my books. I won't be sending off endless emails to book bloggers getting them to review my books etc.

It may be dewy-eyed and foolish, and I may be missing a trick in making money, but I'd rather get to work writing my next book than wasting my time with all of that stuff. That's not to say I decry others who go down that road. My thought is each to their own. If that's what they want to do, good luck to them.

But recently I've been annoyed by a number of self promotion tactics by other writers – I won't mention names – that have intruded on my writerly life style. (I'm not actually sure that I make enough money to have a life style but the concept still applies!) And in this blog I'm going to go through them and say why I think they're things we shouldn't do as writers.

Okay so my month began with the usual annoyances, but one started bugging me more than the rest. Writers trying to hawk their works through writer fora. It happens. Moderators do their best but still some of this dross still gets through. We've all seen it. But it is annoying. Usually what happens is that an author joins a particular group whatever it happens to be. And then they completely spam the forum with thinly disguised – sometimes undisguised – posts trying to sell their books. You know the ones. Every post contains endless links back to their own book under some sort of irrelevant pretext. “Yes I agree, you shouldn't use the passive voice which is why in my new book – link, link, link – I didn't do it!”

Here's why I think those who do this, absolutely shouldn't.

First it pisses me off! Yeah, I know – that goes without saying. But I wanted to say it anyway! And it is actually an important point. Because if it pisses me off, then it probably does the same for most other contributors to the forum. And if I'm not going to be inspired to buy your book, then they aren't likely to be either. And some of them – not me because I am too damn lilly livered to do something like this – are going to get angry. So if you do this, expect scathing reviews on your book page. Expect complaints. Expect a backlash. And for goodness sake – don't imagine that you're being clever. Writers are clever people too – and they know what you're doing!

Look writing fora are for writers to get together and discuss writing issues. Some fora provide places where you can advertise your latest work. Use them by all means. I do sometimes. But don't upset everyone else.

And if that isn't enough for those who still want to do it, think on this. We aren't your audience! You sell books to readers. If you're going to insist on spamming some forum with your oh so cleverly disguised post that no one will ever guess is really an add, spam a reader's forum!

There's also one other reason for anyone who wants to be a writer not to do this. And it goes under that lovely old saying - “even a seagull doesn't shit in its own nest”! If you want to become a good writer you are going to need the help of other members of the writing community. That's going to be a problem for you down the track if you've already been banned from all the writing fora out there.

Okay – I'm calm now. But that is one thing that gets me a little wound up from time to time. Here's another which is somewhat less annoying to me personally, but which will land a lot of fools in very hot water.

This one cropped up last week on a Facebook group I frequent. The use of name dropping. You've all seen it. The use of tag lines etc that compare your book to someone else's. “If you loved – insert best seller title – you'll love this.” Or; “What if – insert best seller title – was only the beginning.” Or that perennial favourite; “It's – insert best seller title – meets – insert best seller title”.

Why shouldn't you do this? Well first it is shonky. It's cheap and parasitic. It's desperate. And it looks all of those things. In fact it looks like what it is, some wannabe author trying to hitch his book to a successful one and ride his coat tails.

And yeah I've heard the excuses too. The typical “I was just trying to tell readers what the book was about.” Yeah right! As if they can't read the damned blurb! Or that mantra of teen criminals everywhere – “other people do it!” Yes and other people steal too – what's your point?!

Look bottom line from me – your work should be strong enough to stand on its own. If it isn't no amount of riding the successes of others in a desperate attempt to sell it is going to help you.

But hey, it's your morality and not my place to judge. I'll simply see the line, realise that your book is probably poor, and not buy it. But if that doesn't convince you that you don't want to go down this shonky road, here's something that might. The dreaded word – Trademarked!

Yes I know, you can't copyright a title. That's true. But I'm not talking about copyright. I'm talking about trademarks. Things that identify one product from another in customers' minds. And many if not most of the highly successful works that end up as best sellers and movies end up with their titles trademarked. That means the use of those titles is restricted.

So what does that mean for you if you use that title in your marketing? Well first it means asking yourself all sorts of questions. Did you have permission from the trademark holder to use the title? Does your use of the title in any way allow your product to be confused with the other in the minds of readers? Does your use disparage the original work? Is what you said in any way untrue? And if any of the answers to that are not good, then it means lawyers at a dozen paces!

You may be lucky. The trademark holder's lawyers may just issue a take down notice. I.e. get this thing off the shelves! Or you may not be and they may sue for damages. And here's a heads up for you – the more successful your book is the worse it's going to be. You sell a dozen copies to your mum and a few friends, the chances are you'll just get a notice. You sell a million copies, and the chances are you'll be in court losing not just every cent you made from the book but also your house, your left kidney and your first born child!

So bottom line here for authors is don't do it. You're playing with fire as well as making used car salesmen look good!

But here's the third shonky self promotion strategy that impacted on me this month, and the one that really set my blood pressure to boil. And again it's a Facebook one.

This month I received a number of “friends” requests, and unlike my usual cautious self, I didn't think to check out the people who wanted to be my friends. Okay, that was my mistake, and so perhaps I had a right to be annoyed but not one to be surprised when some of my new “friends” started posting dating posts on my page. Needless to say they got unfriended fast, blocked and reported as spam merchants. And from here on out I will remember the golden rule of Facebook – I hate everybody!

However what really caught me by surprise was when one other of my new “friends” was actually an author trying to flog his book on my Facebook page! Now that hasn't happened before. Not to me at least.

Again he's been unfriended, blocked and reported as a spam merchant. But in his case my wrath is unabated! (Hence this entire rant!) He is a fellow author, defacing my Facebook page with his shonky self promotions of his book. So just who the hell does he think he is?!

Aaagh!

So if I, a mild mannered writer am utterly pissed off by this sort of behaviour, imagine what others who aren't quite so lilly livered are going to be! Imagine what they might do!

And so readers and would be authors I can only come back to this one point after my entire, foaming at the mouth, rant. Don't ever do any of these things. They will surely come back to bite you!

Cheers, Greg.

MFA - Creative Writing Teacher Quits - With A Few Choice Words

Hi Guys,

 

Recently you will have read since its all over the blogosphere, about Ryan Boudinot, a former teacher of creative writing in an MFA programme who quit and then decided to leave a few unfortunate comments.

 

http://www.thestranger.com/books/features/2015/02/27/21792750/things-i-can-say-about-mfa-writing-programs-now-that-i-no-longer-teach-in-one

 

And of course there have been a great many (outraged) responses to his blog, which seems to have become something of a storm magnet. This is my own response which I hope will be somewhat more balanced than many.

 

To begin with let me just say that teaching is a hard job. Ask anyone who's been in the profession. It wears down the soul. And so first I applaud Mr. Boudinot for having made this a career of his and having tried to teach. But I would also say that given the general tone of his blog, I think he may have been in the job too long. It strikes me as the sort of post someone would write who's a bit on the jaded side of things.

 

I would also say that as has been said many times, the most convincing sort of lie is the half truth. The lie that has a nugget of truth at its core. And most of his blog post reads like that. It is not that there is no truth in what he says. If there wasn't people could simply look at it, laugh, and walk away. It is that there is a nugget of truth in there which is expanded upon and then made into a great flat blanket claim.

 

And last let me just say that Mr. Boudinot's claims - at least the headlines - read as black and white. As absolute rules that must be adhered to. But the truth is that with creative writing as with most other human endeavours there is a huge grey area. There are no hard and fast rules. If you do this you will not necessarily succeed. And if you do that you will not necessarily fail. You will just make things either easier or harder for yourself.

 

Okay, over to the claims he makes.

 

1 Writers are born with talent.

 

Well this is absolutely true. Everyone is born with all sorts of talents for all sorts of things. Maths, rugby and writing to name but three. But no one (or at least almost no one) is born with so little talent that they will never be able to produce great creative writing. And equally no one is born with such great talent that they can simply write masterpieces without some study and hard work. Mr. Boudinot actually alludes to this once you get past the salacious headline.

 

2 If you haven't started writing seriously by the time you're a teenager you're probably not going to make it.

 

Again a half truth. Yes if you start writing seriously at a young age you have a better chance of succeeding. The same is true everywhere. Tiger Woods would have to be the world's best example of how valuable starting as a toddler practically and training from then on can be. But if you start later does that mean you're doomed to failure? No. Even Mr. Boudinot says "probably". The fact is that many great writers have started later in life. What those of us who do start later - like me - is that the journey for us will probably be harder. But if we're willing to put the hours and sweat in, there's no reason to assume that any of us can't make it.

 

3 If you aren't a serious reader don't expect anyone to read what you write.

 

Well this ones a complete pile of pooh. Yes reading is vital to becoming a good writer. But is there any evidence that what you read will make you a better or worse writer? No. What we do know is expressed in that mantra every writer is told almost from the start - Write what you know. So lets take two well known authors - Dame Barbara Cartland and Feodor Dostoyevsky. Do I know what either of them read as kids? No. But is it a fair bet that the first read romance and the second serious literature? Yes. And what does this tell us? That That Dame Barbara Cartland probably couldn't write serious literature (don't you just hate the sheer snobbishness of the term) and Feodor probably couldn't write light romantic fiction. But is either of them not read? No. The truth is that both of them are highly read and respected. What you read won't determine whether you'll be read in turn. What it will do is probably steer you in a certain direction writing wise, and that in turn will decide who reads you - not how many. But that's one of the great things about creative writing. There isn't just one thing you can write to be read.

 

4 No one cares about your problems if you're a shitty writer.

 

And here were return to the issue of burn out among teachers. (Note that I choose to see things this way rather than the unfortunate alternative which is that this is how Mr. Boudinot always felt.) What I read here is that Mr. Boudinot is saying don't come to me with your problems unless you have something great to bring with them. As I said at the start teaching is a hard profession. But one of the things that stands out for me when I think about the teachers I've had, is that the best of them were the ones who understood that I like everyone else had problems and were willing to listen and help.

 

5 You don't need my help to get published.

 

Well this one is actually completely true in this day of the internet and the indie.

 

Okay guys. That's my two cents worth on this unfortunate episode in the annals of creative writing. Now it's up to you to go and write and prove this guy wrong.

 

Cheers, Greg.

 

 

Yes! The SFWA Wants Us! - Oh Wait A Minute Should That Be No?

Hi Guys,

 

Well the big news this week - the SFWA wants us! Well wants may be a strong word. They'd consider letting a few of us indies in the door if we can meet whatever standards they deem appropriate.

Now I don't want to sound bitter, and if they do eventually decide to allow some self publishers in and assuming I have sufficient sales or what have you to meet their standards, I will give the option serious thought. But it occurs to me that this is 2014, and they are a few years too late for many indies. Worse than that of course for them the indies who will I assume make the grade by selling however many tens of thousands of books, will probably be wondering the same thing I am - what's in it for me?

The prestige of belonging to an internationally known writers association? Well much as I hate to say it as of last year the SFWA found itself embroiled in a bitter controversy over sexism - and some of that prestige has gone, no matter which side of the debate you find yourself on.

The connection to other well known trade published writers and other industry big wigs? Maybe, but at the same time it must be considered that many of the more successful indies already have those connections. And lets face it, if they can sell well as indies what exactly is the attraction of trade? Less money?

Legal advice? Yes, absolutely. But you still have to pay for it whether you're a member or not. So maybe on reflection that's actually a no. But the Grievance Committee sounds like it might be useful.

The emergency medical fund? It's not really on my radar at present and if one day I have to fly to the middle of nowhere and then become ill while there I'm sure I'll have arranged appropriate travel insurance first.

Their private discussion forums? Hmm? Since they're private I can't really comment as to what's on them. The secrets to the publishing universe perhaps? Their favourite chicken soup recipes? But there's an awful lot of public fora I can join and get I would guess, most of what's on them.

Look, at the end of the day I can't really advise anyone who's an indie sci fi / fantasy author which way to jump. That has to be up to each and every one of us. All I can do is say please do take a look at the site and be informed on the issue. Also leave a comment on their site. Let them at least know your thoughts.

http://www.sfwa.org/

And of course one other thing. Before jumping one way or the other ask yourself this question. What's in it for me? My view, four or five years ago there would have been a lot. Now, not so much. I think the ship has sailed and they've been left standing on the dock.

Cheers, and as always - be good or don't get caught!

Greg.