An Ode to the Senior Class of MacArthur High School By Gina Welborn (c. 1988)

Gina Welborn

Like dirt in the wind

wanting...

waiting...

knowing...

knowing that one day they will be sucked in the great vacuum cleaner of life.

Like dirt in the wind

reaching...

yearning...

striving...

striving to leave the oneness of themselves and unify with others to become one large dirtball.

Are you a dirtball? How many times do you “leave the oneness” of yourself to become just like your friends or celebrities or other writers out there?

“A true breakout is not an imitation but a break-through to a more profound individual expression. It demands that an author reach deep inside to find what is truthful, original, important and inspiring in his own world view.” ~Donald Maass, WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL

Knowconflict.com defines worldview as “the way s/he sees the world and his/her place in it. In includes the person's beliefs about how things are done and by whom, what is good and bad, why things happen as they do, and who holds the reins of power. It also includes the group or groups to which a person belongs or with which s/he identifies.” Your worldview may contradict the mainstream, follow the mainstream, agree with the majority, agree with the minority, may be liberal, conservative, narrow-minded, open-minded, no minded. Everyone has a worldview. Everyone has a voice.

A good writer learns to hone her “voice.” How?

READ POETRY. Samuel Taylor Coleridge once said, “Prose consists of words in their best order. Poetry consists of the best words in the best order.” Reading poetry will cause you to become more aware of the dynamos of the correct word choice. Poetry helps you learn to hear grammatical rhythm.

READ MORE OUTSIDE YOUR GENRE THAN IN. What goes in, come out. If most of what you are reading is the genre you are writing, then you will end up regurgi-writing what you read. My two current voice-sharpeners are Let’s Be Brave by Annie Downs and Girl Meets God by Laura Winner.

PUT YOU IN YOUR STORY. Maass writes, “It is from the unknowable shadows of your subconscious that your stories will find their drive and from which they will draw their meaning. No one can loan you that or teach you that.” If a scene, chapter, story, character, scares you to write it, write it.

Publishers want something different. Publishers want something they can sell. That can seem dichotomy. What makes it not is You the Writer. Hone your voice. The world already has a ___(fill in name of your favorite author)___.

It’s just wanting...waiting...hoping for a you.

 

About the Author

Gina Welborn is the author of three Barbour novellas, including one in the ECPA-bestselling Mistletoe Memories, and is contracted for two more. The year 2014 ushers in the release of her novels: The Heiress's Courtship, The Marshal's Pursuit, and Masterpiece Marriage. A moderately obsessive fan of Community, Once Upon a Time, and Chopped, Gina lives in Oklahoma with her pastor husband, their five Okie-Hokie children, a box-lab, two rabbits, four guinea pigs, and a fancy Russian dwarf hamster named Tom Bob Deucalion. She is represented by the Steve Laube Agency. To learn more about her writing or read excerpts, visit her website: www.GinaWelborn.com

Masterpiece Marriage

Mary Varrs prefers botany to romance.

She thinks studying the growth pattern of her tomato seedlings is more time-worthy than pursuing a mate. When she needs illustrations of her prized plants, Mary turns to Priscilla Dane Osbourne for help.

Zenus Dane also seeks help from his Aunt Priscilla. In order to salvage his flooded textile mill, he wants to sell her hand drawn quilt patterns alongside his repurposed fabric scraps. No quilter had national name recognition like his aunt, but Priscilla is fiercely protective of her patterns. Convincing her would not be easy.

It seems Priscilla is the answer to both their prayers. But Priscilla would rather weave a masterpiece marriage for her nephew than save his flooded business. Trouble is, her plans don’t include Mary, whose own growing attraction for the textiler could jeopardize Priscilla’s good will toward her. If faced with a decision between love and ambition, will Mary be able to choose?

Author Voice, Part 4 by Megan DiMaria

Please welcome Megan DiMaria for her final installment on Author Voice.

Author Voice, Part 4

If you followed my previous articles, I hope you understand author voice a bit more. Author voice is the distinct manner in which a novelist creates sentences and story.

In Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, literary agent Donald Maass asks, “Are the voices of your characters ordinary and generic, or are they highly colored and specific? Heighten point of view throughout your manuscript, and you will strengthen your story’s impact.”

I took his advice to deepen the characterization, motivation, the setting of my character Linda in Out of Her Hands. And dug a bit deeper to find the particular way I would say it, to find my author voice.

Before:

I regard the beauty standing before me. And she is beautiful. If I’d seen a portrait of this girl, I’d have thought that her skin was retouched, her eyes were highlighted and her lips were enhanced. And her body? Well, you can just say it’s every man’s dream. No wonder Nick thinks he’s falling in love. What’s not to like?

She releases her timid grasp on my damp hand and we stand like two idiots, vacantly staring at one another, each smiling cautiously. I nod. “Shall we go inside?”

In response, she turns and leads me inside. Really, proper etiquette would have had her deferring to me, and following me into the house. Into my house.

After:

I regard the beauty standing before me. And she is beautiful. If I’d seen a portrait of this girl, I’d have thought that her skin was retouched, her eyes were highlighted and her lips were enhanced. And her body? Well, you can just say it’s every man’s dream. No wonder Nick thinks he’s falling in love. What’s not to like?

She releases her timid grasp on my damp hand, and we stand like two idiots, each smiling at the other as if we were vacuous socialites about to go for the jugular over the last pair of $1,200 Versace leather boots. I nod. “Shall we go inside?”

In response, she turns and leads me inside. Really, proper etiquette would have had her deferring to me, and following me into the house. Into my house.

Here are some more tips to developing your author voice:

1. Allow yourself to be lousy—while you’re finding your voice, some of what you write may very well stink. That’s Okay. It’s all part of the process.

2. Write honestly and allow your passion to shine through. When you write from your personal feelings, your voice will be natural. Write as if you were talking to a friend.

3. Care about your subject matter. If you don’t care what you’re writing about, you’ll never discover your true voice.

4. Play games—Select a picture from a magazine, billboard, or advertisement, and write a one-line sentence about what is going on. Or go through old photo albums and write a short story about one of your favorite pictures.

In Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Brown and King say, “In order to write with a mature voice, you have to mature first.”

Be passionate with your ideas and put your feelings into your writing. Get emotional, but don’t tell your reader how you feel, show him/her.

What is your opinion? Don’t be afraid to share. Opinions give us our voice. I encourage you to practice your craft, pursue your voice, and perfect your style. And don't forget, have fun writing your story!

Megan DiMaria’s debut novel, Searching for Spice, is about a long-married woman who wants to have an affair—with her husband. Her second novel, Out of Her Hands, is about taking life as it comes at you with all the surprises and challenges you face with young adult children. In addition to reaching out through her novels, Megan also speaks to women’s groups and teaches on the craft of fiction to writers at conferences and regional seminars. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and assistant director of Words For The Journey Christian Writers Guild, Rocky Mountain Region. You can find her online at www.megandimaria.com, www.megandimaria.blogspot.com, Facebook, and Twitter. She also authors an online writing column at Examiner.com, contributes to the Seriously Write blog, and the Coffee and the Muse writer’s ezine.

Author Voice, Part 3 by Megan DiMaria

Please welcome Megan DiMaria with Part Three of her Author Voice series!

Author Voice, Part 3

I hope you’re enjoying the different samples of author voice I’ve been sharing in my previous articles. I’ve got a few more distinctive voices to share with you.

Beloved by Toni Morrison

There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up; holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smoothes and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind—wrapped tight like a skin. Then there is a loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive, on its own. A dry and spreading thing that make the sound of one’s own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.

I think you'll agree that Ms. Morrison definitely has her own distinctive voice. I love to get lost in her beautiful, lyrical style.

Tangerine by Marilynn Griffith

Fall came to New York like a Good Samaritan, blanketing the city with a generous wind. Clouds floated tall and wide, majestic like a grown man a good suit. Jean Guerra lent her short hair to the cold, giving the wind a place to leave some goodness. Instead, the air blew past her face a brushed her lips like a kiss from God.

One thing I love about Marilynn Griffith's novels is her use of sensory elements. Her novel Made of Honor had so many delightful references to fragrance that I had to email her one day after I was in a soap and fragrance store in Aspen to tell her that it made me think of her novel.

Here are a few tips on how you can develop your unique voice:

1. Read, read, read—fiction, non-fiction, in your genre, out of your genre.

2. Write, write, write—don’t limit yourself to one particular type or genre of writing. Experiment. Write letters, blogs, dreams, and greeting cards

3. Copy—sit down and copy the voice of an author you admire or whose work is distinctive. You will always put your own spin on the style, incorporating your worldview and your own tone of language.

4. Limit yourself—write only 140-character thoughts. Twitter challenges you to write your thoughts in only 140 characters, you must be able to distill the essence of what you’re communicating. It helps you to boil down your language to the most meaningful idea.

Visit this site again next week for the rest of the list.

Megan DiMaria’s debut novel, Searching for Spice, is about a long-married woman who wants to have an affair—with her husband. Her second novel, Out of Her Hands, is about taking life as it comes at you with all the surprises and challenges you face with young adult children. In addition to reaching out through her novels, Megan also speaks to women’s groups and teaches on the craft of fiction to writers at conferences and regional seminars. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and assistant director of Words For The Journey Christian Writers Guild, Rocky Mountain Region. You can find her online at www.megandimaria.com, www.megandimaria.blogspot.com, Facebook, and Twitter. She also authors an online writing column at Examiner.com, contributes to the Seriously Write blog, and the Coffee and the Muse writer’s ezine.

Understanding Author Voice by Megan DiMaria

Please welcome Megan DiMaria back with her continuing series on author voice.

Understanding Author Voice

In my previous article we started discussing author voice, which is the distinct manner in which a novelist creates sentences and story.

In other words, your voice is your exclusive worldview: your beliefs, your fears, your attitudes, your dreams, the way you react to situations.

All of this means that you have to put yourself on your page. This is what is known as developing your voice. Voice isn't merely style. Style would be easy by comparison. Style is watching your use of adjectives and doing a few flashy things with alliteration or simile. Style without voice is flat. Voice is style, plus personal observations, plus passion, plus belief, plus desire. Voice is revealing yourself on the page, and it can be a powerful, frightening experience.

Yesterday we looked at two samples of writing, today there are two more “voices” to listen to:

Women’s Intuition by Lisa Samson

FLANNERY DESERVES TO KNOW THE TRUTH about her father. One day I'm going to have to tell her. But not tonight. I am worn out.

It's a tiredness of years.

You know how those ladies' magazines pretend women can do it all and still appear fresh as a sweet-smelling daisy by a clear Swiss spring? Wearing cute loafers, tweed miniskirts, and a camel cashmere twinset, they deposit their kids at soccer in sleek silver cars, green vans with television screens, or gargantuan white SUVs. Drive-through windows constitute meal planning. They see the best doctors because they don't mind going across town. Malls and boutiques bark their clothing on glitzy, stylistic posters. They instantly rid themselves of the nasty Flair inserts in the Valu-Pak coupon collections I look forward to each month. And they throw them into a recycling bin they bought from some woodsy, catalog-driven company.

They adroitly embroider their own existence with the silk threads of others' lives as though the fabric of their day-to-day duties was spun of gossamer and not the heavy mail plates that make up mine.

Was I ever like that?

Once upon a time, I suppose.

Magdalene by Angela Hunt

SILENCE, AS HEAVY AS DOOM, wraps itself around me as two guards lead me into the lower-level judgment hall. When I fold my hands, the chink of my chains disturbs the quiet.

My judge, Flavius Gemellus, senior centurion of the Cohors Secunda halica Civum Romanorum, looks up from the rolls of parchment on his desk, his eyes narrow. I don't blame him for being annoyed. I am not a Roman citizen, so I have no right to a trial. Besides, I have already confessed and am ready to die.

Do you see a big difference between Angela Hunt’s and Lisa Samson’s excerpts? What do you hear that’s very different?

Can you see the difference in style, personal observations, author’s passions and beliefs in these two samples? Can you glimpse into their worldviews through their voice? I think so. Also, both authors wrote in first person, yet Lisa’s is introspective, and Angela’s character is evaluating her surroundings. Both authors have a very distinctive voice.

Be sure to come back next week. I’ve got some more wonderful samples to examine and some tips on developing your voice.

Megan DiMaria’s debut novel, Searching for Spice, is about a long-married woman who wants to have an affair—with her husband. Her second novel, Out of Her Hands, is about taking life as it comes at you with all the surprises and challenges you face with young adult children. In addition to reaching out through her novels, Megan also speaks to women’s groups and teaches on the craft of fiction to writers at conferences and regional seminars. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and assistant director of Words For The Journey Christian Writers Guild, Rocky Mountain Region. You can find her online at www.megandimaria.com, www.megandimaria.blogspot.com, Facebook, and Twitter. She also authors an online writing column at Examiner.com, contributes to the Seriously Write blog, and the Coffee and the Muse writer’s ezine.

Author Voice, Part 1 by Megan DiMaria

Please welcome author Megan DiMaria for a series on author voice. She'll be here the first four Mondays in August with a new article on voice every week.

Author Voice

A lot of time is spent in writing circles discussing author voice. What is it? How do you perfect it?

According to bestselling author Brandilyn Collins, author voice is the distinct manner in which a novelist creates sentences and story.

Let’s look at some passages from books by two authors and “listen” to a few different voices and what they say to us.

Coming Home by Rosamund Pilcher:

The Porthkerris Council School stood half-way up the steep hill which climbed from the heart of the little town to the empty moors which lay beyond. It was a solid Victorian edifice, built of granite blocks, and had three entrances, marked Boys, Girls, and Infants, a legacy from the days when segregation of the sexes was mandatory. It was surrounded by a Tarmac playground and a tall wrought-iron fence, and presented a fairly forbidding face to the world. But on this late afternoon in December, it stood fairly ablaze with light, and from its open doors streamed a flood of excited children, laden with boot-bags, book-bags, balloons on strings, and small paper bags filled with sweets. They emerged in small groups, jostling and giggling and uttering shrieks of cheerful abuse at each other, before finally dispersing and setting off for home.

What does this author’s voice say to us? Ms. Pilcher invites us into a fictional setting with rich detail but without lingering on the minutia that might bog down the story. (Confession time, she’s one of my all-time favorite authors.) She seems affectionate in describing this scene and wanting us to see the excited children as they head on home. I imagine that I’m sitting in a toasty kitchen, sipping tea while a dear friend tells me a good story.

Here’s another sample:

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote:

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call "out there." Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.

Capote’s description of Holcomb is almost clinical in style. His voice colors his description of the setting, especially when talks about the local accent. He seems to show no special affection for the area, yet he’s invited us to Holcomb to journey with him as he investigates the story behind a family murdered. His is such a different voice than Pilcher’s, don’t you think?

I have good news and bad news for you today.

The good news is that no one, no other writer, speaker, or thinker can steal your voice. Your voice is what publishers will buy. Your voice is the only product readers can’t get anywhere else.

The bad news is that no one can teach you how to create your voice.

But, I have more good news—with practice, you can discover and develop your voice.

Join me again next Monday when we look at a few more authors’ voices and continue this discussion.

But, tell me—have you found your author voice?

Megan DiMaria’s debut novel, Searching for Spice, is about a long-married woman who wants to have an affair—with her husband. Her second novel, Out of Her Hands, is about taking life as it comes at you with all the surprises and challenges you face with young adult children. In addition to reaching out through her novels, Megan also speaks to women’s groups and teaches on the craft of fiction to writers at conferences and regional seminars. She is a member of American Christian Fiction Writers and assistant director of Words For The Journey Christian Writers Guild, Rocky Mountain Region. You can find her online at www.megandimaria.com, www.megandimaria.blogspot.com, Facebook, and Twitter. She also authors an online writing column at Examiner.com, contributes to the Seriously Write blog, and the Coffee and the Muse writer’s ezine.