Trusting Your Voice

I am SO LAME and I posted this in my pages instead of posts…like two days ago. And now I lost some really nice comments fixing it and putting it in the right spot. And THIS is why you shouldn’t do things while you’re half asleep…but here it is…in the right spot now:

I got the idea for this post when I started thinking about a D I got in college. Yes, a D. On a paper. A written one. For writing.

It got me thinking about every writing experience I had in college. And how excruciatingly painful I found them. But not just non-fiction essay writing…writing fiction as well. I had the bug to do it. I was always creating stories in my head, always thinking about characters I’d made up and what they might be doing. Sometimes I would sit and try to write it all down. It would last about…ten pages. One start I *think* went up to about thirty pages and that was my absolute all time record.

Why was it so hard for me? I think it comes down to the fact that I didn’t know my voice. Or I at least didn’t trust it! If I was going to write an essay, I was going to sit down and regurgitate facts in my very best Smart Writing Tone and try to give the teacher exactly what I thought they wanted. It was dry. It had no authenticity. It sucked.

I did the same with my fiction. My first attempts were either YA ‘Stranded on an island or in the woods’ type stuff. The kind of thing that showed I’d read Hatchet one too many times. And I tried to write it the way I thought it should soon. Same when I went to YA mysteries. Same when I tried fantasy. I didn’t want it to sound like me. I wanted it to sound ‘real’ or ‘professional’ or something…

I really discovered the JOY of writing when I started putting together little email stories for my friends. They were done in a very outlandish, humorous style and I didn’t think about the words. I just let it go. I played. I had fun. I read it out loud to at my creative writing class and my prof said ‘That’s what you need to write’.

First person detective noir featuring the worst similes I could think of? (Incidentally, it was a line from one of those stories that got Dishonorable Mention in the Bulwer-Lytton contest. But that’s a different story altogether.)

Well, obviously no. That’s not what I ended up writing. And no, I don’t go anywhere half as absurd when I write an actual book. But those crazy stories just for friends unlocked what I’d been missing: MY VOICE.

It was painful to sit and write two sentences when I was struggling with every word. Because I was rejecting my instincts, rejecting my style, and trying to replace it with someone else’s. And it just didn’t work. It actually really sucked.

Even when I first started writing romance I fell back into the ‘how would Kim Lawrence say it’ sort of thing. Because I could think of these writers I admired, and I wanted to be a part of their line, so of course, I felt I had to write like them. It was my amazing editor, Jenny, who pulled me from slush, that said I needed to trust MY voice and what makes ME unique. She told me not to fall back on reactions, scenes, facial expressions just because I thought that was what was ‘supposed’ to happen.

And as I’ve gone on, I’ve learned more and more to trust my voice. And more and more, I love the act of sitting and writing. I find it freeing. I find it fun. I find it to be nothing like it was for me back when I first started.

Does everyone love my voice? Nope. Not even close. But it’s my voice. We all have one. It’s what makes our writing unique, it’s what will make it stand out. It’s what will make people love us, or hate us. It’s what sets our writing free.

For me, finding and trusting my voice has been a process. The trust especially is an ongoing one. But I’m getting there. I hope you’ll all do the same. Be you, be proud. And find the joy in your words.