Tag Archives: Kelly Delaney

The Voice. Like a Prayer.

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I hear your voice, it’s like an angel sighing
I have no choice, I hear your voice
Feels like flying

~Madonna

While I’m sure the Material Girl was not singing about voice in writing, I still feel like this applies. When you read your favorite author and mentally hear the words they have written, you connect to their voice and that’s what speaks to you. It’s the particular words that they choose, they way they turn a phrase or their cutting dialogue. It feels like flying.

So how do you get that writing voice? According to Kelly Delaney and that really cool webinar I took recently, there are four ways to work on finding your voice:

1. Practice. (I think this is sometimes the hardest)

  • Write every day (super hard for me!)
  • Don’t focus on finishing projects to share (not as hard for me)
  • Experiment with different styles and genres ( I haven’t tried this yet)

2. Talk to yourself (You mean, do what I’ve already been doing my whole life anyway? Check!)

  • Tell your story out loud (This makes a huge difference! Especially in my picture book manuscripts)
  • Pay attention to differences between spoken and written stories (Hmm, I will.)

3. Don’t force it (But I’m desperately trying to find my VOICE!)

  • Forcing strains voice (Oh…gotcha)
  • Don’t mimic other voices (Mimic not, I will.)
  • Rhyming makes things harder (But I got more rhymes than a Bible’s got Psalms! See it even worked for House of Pain)

4. Retelling (as I explained in my last post)

  • Take another piece of short text and tell that story in your own words (You can use my post and retell it in your words or go back to retelling obituaries, you weirdo, you.)

There you have it. Four practical ways to find your writing voice. Just like a prayer, I’ll take you there!

 

 

Double Vision

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You remember the Foreigner song, Double Vision? Let’s just take a moment to sing it a together:

Fill my eyes with that double vision
No disguise for that double vision
Ooh, when it gets through to me, it’s always new to me
My double vision gets the best of me

I have no idea what it means. The late 70’s were a weird time. What does this have to do about writing? Well, I’m glad you asked!

This past Friday I participated in a great webinar put out by Dr. Mira Reisberg and Kelly Delaney, Assistant Editor at Alfred A. Knopf. The main reasons why I signed up for this webinar was:

1. It was free

2. I need all the help I can get

3. Did I mention it was free?!

I wasn’t expecting too much from the webinar. I thought they would gloss over some things I already knew but I thought, “Eh, why not (and free!)” Boy, was I wrong! The webinar was all about voice-not The Voice with that guy from Maroon 5 who sings like he’s sucking helium-YOUR voice. Your writing voice, the one that distinguishes your work from everyone else’s.

I thought I knew my voice. I mean it’s only constantly rambling all day in my head and it comes out of my mouth saying things like, “Put that down! Don’t eat that! Please eat this! No we can’t have macaroni and cheese for breakfast. Don’t sit on your sister.” But that is not my writing voice (though I could probably write a book about all of the weird things I say to kids). Turns out that I wasn’t really in touch with my voice and the manuscript that I had worked on and polished and had professionally edited was not, in fact, reflecting my voice. Total. Bummer.

I spent the weekend alternating between sulking and muttering to myself (in search of my voice) and furiously revising and rewriting (and more muttering) to get my voice onto the page. It was a long weekend to say the least.

I learned a lot from the webinar which I will cover in other posts but today I just want to touch on a suggestion from Kelly about how to find your voice. She mentioned that you should take small written pieces that you come across (think newspaper articles, blurbs about tv shows, obituaries if your particularly morbid) and rewrite them in your voice. I thought it was such a fun suggestion and one way to be creative everyday. What a great way to stay in-tune with your voice.

If you are interested in more with Mira, she does a Children’s Book Academy which looks great. I hope to take it in the future. If you’ve taken it before or are signing up this year, let me know! In the meantime, go out and find your voice! (Not you, Adam Levine, I’m done with your voice)