The traditional advice is to write the book you'd love to read.
Not the book you display proudly on your shelf, not the one you talk about at parties and quote reviews without having read it, not the one you wish you would write, and not the one you could write if you were another writer.
No.
Write the kind of book you read when you're alone at night and reading is the only answer-- the story that warms you like a blanket, sparks your senses, excites your emotions and your mind, and returns you to the enchanted garden of childhood when every story was magic.
The story that changed your life. The story that made you feel as if stars were falling from the sky into your hands.
Yeah, that story.
The one that was clearly written by an author who loved her story because it sang her truth. No wonder those stories change our lives. Writing them changed their authors' lives.
So why isn't that always the song we write, the illusion we perform, the story we write?
Fear is one reason. Fear of digging deep into our truth and admitting what we love-- kind of like sex, admitting what turns us on. And fear of being judged. We've heard often enough that children's literature is lesser, romance is mindless, magic is nothing but tricks, and on and on.
Another reason is that we don't trust the whispering voice inside us, the jagged-edged stars that appear in our writing with no logic, no sense, no reason ... and yet, they're ours emerging from a deep, dark world we can't explain.
Hold onto those stars. Love that whispering voice. And when you follow the whispers like a detective following clues, the voice on the page sounds ... more like you.
And you'll love your story, and others will, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment