Hear Ye Voices

By Susan Reichert, Editor-in-Chief for Southern Writers Magazine

Interesting thing happened on the way to the prom! I’ve always wanted to say that, don’t know why, I just have. I say it today because I have been looking at all the emails I get from people who want to sell us programs.  Every one of them says, “To write a book better buy this…”. Then you get those that say “You can’t write a book if you don’t have this…” Obviously, I do delete most of them, because it’s hype. However, it got me to thinking about the hype writers get in their emails telling them they have to write it this way, market it with this program, use this Social Media–it’s the only one that works.

For writers, we want to be able to write what readers want to read, develop our platforms, be good at promoting our books (so people will buy our books). Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for educating ourselves to use the tools we need to be the best we can be. What I don’t see coming across in emails is how to be yourself and be true to yourself.

Funny thing in life, I could try all day to be like someone else, write like someone else, but at the end of the day, I am who I am. Yes, I can better myself, you will note, it is me I am working on, to improve the me that is me–not to make me into someone else.

With all this said, I felt it appropriate to remind writers–just be yourself. Write like you. Let the voice in your story be your voice, not Joe’s, William or Harry’s. You are the only one who can tell the story that is in your head…so tell it, in your words. You want your readers to hear your voice. That’s the voice you want them to like, to want to hear more of.

Same thing with promoting your books, tell the readers what you want them to know about your books. Readers are smart. Just use your words. Talk to them as if they were sitting across from you–like you were talking to a friend. That’s the voice they want to hear. Readers buy books from authors they like. They like the person. They like the voice. They trust you to produce a book they will enjoy. So, hear, speak and write–your voice.

Where Do You Get Your Ideas?

By Morgen Bailey

This is a question that aspiring writers invariably ask and established authors dread being asked, or so they’ve told me. For most of us – I’ve been a writer (on and off) for eight years – ideas are everywhere, but what do you do if they just don’t leap out at you?

You look in newspapers: you can write about the main news story of the day, change the names, location, write it as fiction and see where it takes you. I often find though that it’s the smaller articles, away from the front few pages, that inspire me the most – the quirky stories that Mark Twain said were “stranger than fiction”. Some are too unbelievable (but I like writing them anyway) and you’ll know when you see them because they will grab you, planting seeds of a plot inside your brain.

You look in magazines: not a lot of difference you might imagine to newspapers, but articles in magazines tend to be more general, not latest events (because invariably they work weeks in advance) but magazines are full of people; real men and women who can become your characters. Locations can become your settings. Agony pages become your dilemmas.

You look out the window: the chances are that your house or apartment overlooks another, so even if you can’t see anyone, you can imagine that they’re there. What are they doing? If they’re just hanging out washing, have them talking to themselves, thinking about something that’s troubling them or a holiday they wish they could afford. This would be a template for a monologue. If you imagine that the phone rings or a visitor calls then there’d be a dialogue. Great practice for dialogue is to write a conversation with no ‘he said’, ‘she said’ etc; just write down what they say and see whether they can keep the conversation going between them. And make the speech authentic; incomplete sentences work well but cut down on the ums and ers. With no description, can the reader still follow what’s happening?

You think of a word: any word. Yes, just one word can set your imagination flowing. Take

‘chicken’ for example. Does it conjure up a dinner you had as a child, or perhaps a story where young boys are egging on a new ‘recruit’ into their gang to carry out a dare as part of his initiation ceremony.

However ideas strike you (or even if you have to lasso them) it’s all about communication. A reader reads your words and creates their world around them. They use their memories to picture your characters. Your Tracey could be a girl they knew from school instead of just a name you picked out of your head… or magazine. If the readers turn the page eager to know what happens next then you’ve done your ‘job’ and hopefully, you’ve had as much enjoyment getting the words there.

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Based in Northamptonshire, England, Morgen Bailey (“Morgen with an E”) is a prolific blogger, podcaster, editor / critiquer, Chair of NWG (which runs the annual H.E. Bates Short Story Competition), Head Judge for the NLG Flash Fiction Competition and creative writing tutor for her local council. She is also a freelance author of numerous ‘dark and light’ short stories, novels, articles, and very occasional dabbler of poetry. Like her, her blog, http://morgenbailey.wordpress.com, is consumed by all things literary. She is also active on Twitter, Facebook along with many others (listed on her blog’s Contact page).She also recently created five online writing groupsand an interview-only blog. Her debut novel is the chick lit eBook The Serial Dater’s Shopping List and she has six others (mostly crime) in the works. http://twitter.com/morgenwriteruk  http://www.facebook.com/morgenwriteruk