Tah-dah! Look at that bright, shiny light bulb, right above my head!
That, my friends, is an idea. They are very rare, the good ones, at least, so treat it carefully or you might scratch the glass.
Though they don’t always show up in the form of a light bulb (in fact, I’ve never had that happen), ideas come. Yeah, try telling that to the author with five deadlines looming above their head while they’re staring at a blank screen.
No, no, you don’t have to be an opera singer. In fact, I’d rather you weren’t. (Sorry to all the fans out there.) I dislike opera.
But that’s not the point.
The point is that everyone’s got a voice. You’ve got vocal chords, a mouth, and fingers on the keyboard. We write to share that voice, to make it heard.
The point is, are you making your voice unique? When people read your words, do they hear you? These are valid and important questions for every writer. Voice is a crucial aspect of writing, especially quality, unique writing that people want to read. Whatever kind of writing you’re into, voice is a part of it, and we all have to master the craft.
Have you ever tried dieting? It is not fun. And, truth be told, neither is cutting out those extra words from your writing. You’ve worked hard, edited, and re-edited, and you’re supposed to just press delete? If you can summon the strength of will, doing so will help out your writing a lot. Diet and exercise strengthens and slims the body. Likewise, trimming the fat off your writing piece will put a power in your words that packs a punch and will drive your message home.
“I’m not happy, Bob. Not happy.” (Name this movie in the comments!)
Want to be a happy writer? Some days this seems like an impossible task. Writing is hard, that’s for darn sure, and it seems like the moments of creativity and inspiration are few and far between. Want to know how to feed that muse and keep the work coming? Here are the top seven tips:
Trembling hands clutched at the letter, threatening to shred the paper to pieces. I steadied my shaking fingers, breaking through the envelope’s seal little by little, careful to keep the paper intact. I already knew that this moment would be the defining one of my young writing career, and I wanted to save it forever.
I had sent in a manuscript. It was 50 pages long, thick beyond imagining in my thirteen-year-old mind, and I had put my heart and soul into those pages. The novel was titled Canterlee, and it was of the fantasy genre, another one of those stories where the characters face epic battles and certain death, but everything turns out all right in the end. To my mind, it was perfect.
I had printed out several copies, which my Dad was only too happy to pay for, and mailed them out to publishers across the nation. And at last, I had a response.
Seal completely free, I inched the letter from its envelope.
