Write Now with Sarah Werner: Finding Your Voice

Finding Your Voice - WN 011

Apr 27, 2015

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Hey friends. Welcome to Episode 011 of the "Write Now" podcast. I'm glad you're here.
How do I develop my writer's voice?
You can probably name a lot of great writers who have their own particular voice. You might have heard something referred to as "Kafka-esque" or "Lovecraftian", or you might recognize echoes of similarity between one particular writer and his or her mentor.

So what is this elusive element we call a voice? And how do we go about developing our own?

Fortunately, you've already taken care of the first step.

Unfortunately, you might have taken a ton of additional steps that you didn't need to take, or that you need to un-take.

As the wise Yoda said, sometimes we must un-learn what we have learned.

It's about finding yourself all over again.
This week's episode of "Write Now" will help you get to the root of where your own personal writer's voice lives, and develop it from there.

It's not a quick or easy process, but I think you'll find it's well worth the journey.

Your voice will allow you to create real, innovative works that will set you apart from the million other writers out there.
The book of the week.

It's so RARE that a book consistently surprises me. Lev Grossman's The Magicians did just that.

Readers either tend to love or hate this book -- and I'm not sure I loved it, but I certainly enjoyed reading it, to the point where the mind-momentum had built up to a point where I couldn't stop reading it. And I valued (so lame a word!) the constant surprise.

This is not so much a cohesive novel as it is a collection of connected vignettes centered around two conceits -- first, that the Harry Potter world is real, and real teenagers react realistically (and more raucously) to the situations such a world presents them with; and second, that the Narnia world is real, and the Harry Potter-world young adults have access to it.

The result is this oddly wonderful mish-mash of the naive and the profane, the cheerful and the dirty, the wondrous and the cynical. I thought it was an excellent portrayal of the post-college-graduation dump into the "real world" of 8-5 jobs and the magical possibilities that seem just out of reach.

Keep up-to-date with my reading exploits on Goodreads.
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Ask me stuff.
I will give you answers! Just submit a question when you visit my contact page and type out your thoughts. You can also email me at hello [at] sarahwerner [dot] com. I can't wait to hear from you.
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What do you think?
Have you found your voice as a writer? How did you do it?

Do you struggle with being "great" vs. being "real"? Have you ever felt guilty for being a "hack"?

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, or email me your thoughts at hello [at] sarahwerner [dot] com!

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Finding Your Voice - WN 011

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