Grand Prize—Hardcover copy of When the Butterflies Came, beaded butterfly bookmark (indicate your color preference when you contact me with your mailing address), live butterfly garden, secret butterfly craft made by me.

Winner = Niki Moss!

First Prize—Sun Catcher project, When the Butterflies Came bookmarks, and secret butterfly craft made by me.

Winner = Akoss!

Second Prize—When the Butterflies Came bookmark and surprise butterfly craft made by me.

Winners = tworiveras and Holly Mueller

*throws confetti*

Congratulations to all the winners!

Please send me an email with your mailing information (joanstradling [at] live [dot] com but remove the spaces and substitute the appropriate symbols for the words in brackets). I’ll ship out the prizes as soon as I have the addresses. If I don’t hear from you within a week, I’ll assume you aren’t interested in the prize and will choose a different winner.

Thanks again for everyone who entered. I’ll be holding another contest soon featuring the Gustav Gloom books (because I LOVE them and want to share the love). So check back.

Write/read on!

–WOW—I loved this book and will talk/have talked about/shared it with others.

–Not totally in love, but this was a great book and I may talk about/share it with others.

–This was okay. I enjoyed reading it, but it’s not my favorite.

–This wasn’t for me. I stopped reading and couldn’t bring myself to finish.

–How did this get published?

If you happen to be the author of one of the books I review, please remember this is my honest opinion. Don’t hate me if I don’t give your book a great big happy grin. I am only one reader in the whole wide readership and I’m sure there are those who’ll love your work—it just wasn’t me.

When the Butterflies Came by Kimberley Griffiths Little——I’ve always loved Kimberley’s books, but I have to say, this is my new favorite. Maybe it’s because I love butterflies, or mysterious keys that unlock mysterious things—or maybe it’s the elements of mystery and danger woven so magically into the story. Whatever the reason, I can’t stop thinking about or talking about this book!

The Story—Tara Doucet (a.k.a “Pantene Princess” who tormented Shelby Jayne in Circle of Secrets) appears to have a perfect life—but, much like her house, the beautiful outside hides a crumbling mess inside. Tara’s beloved Grammy Claire has passed away. Tara might be able to bear it more if her mother hadn’t disappeared in a fit of depression or if she could talk to her sister, Riley. But Tara is alone in her grief and afraid it will swallow her whole. Everything changes when the butterflies appear. Tara knows they must mean something and when she starts getting letters with mysterious keys from her dead Grammy, Tara discovers she was right. And the butterflies that follow Tara are far from ordinary. They were Grammy Claire’s. Armed with her Grammy’s letters and the clues they contain, Tara sets out to discover what the keys open. Doing so draws her deeper into the mysterious world of Grammy Claire’s butterflies—a world that turns out to be far more dangerous than Tara ever imagined.

A heartwarming and uplifting story of hope, love, sibling rivalry, and faith, When the Butterflies Came fluttered into my heart and imagination with wings of graceful prose and vibrant, beautiful characters.

If you’d like to win a copy of the novel and other awesome prizes (including a live butterfly garden), check out my contest (LiveJournal link WordPress link—you only enter in one place but I’m including both links). I wasn’t able to do everything I planed to promote this book (thanks a lot broken leg—grrr), but the contest ends tomorrow so hurry and enter if you haven’t already done so.

Also, as an extra bonus, one lucky commenter on this post will receive a surprise package of butterfly themed items. Just leave a comment that says, “Enter me” if you want to be eligible for the package. This special bonus contest ends tomorrow so enter today!

Write/Read on!

This is my left leg (yes, I have very white skin and need to see some sun, but just concentrate on the bruising and swelling and ignore the rest):

I do have an ankle bone, but the swelling makes it look like I don’t. This picture is almost two weeks after the initial incident. What incident? Why the one where I slammed my leg into my dresser. Now that doesn’t mean I took it off of my body and repeatedly banged it on the dresser (get that image out of your mind if you can). No, I was running from my youngest daughter after waking her by tossing stuffed animals onto her until she was buried under a mass of fluffy furry things (it’s a game we sometimes play to keep her from being cranky in the mornings before school). She erupts from the burial and gives chase. I run to my bedroom where I jump onto my bed before she can get to me. We’ve done it many times before.

Unfortunately, hubby left his laptop and iPad on his side of the bed (nearest the door) so I couldn’t jump onto the bed like I usually do—well, at least not without the risk of breaking his electronics or hurting my self (ironic?). I could have hurried to my side of the bed, but my daughter was almost upon me. So when I reached the foot of the bed, I took my leap. My ankle veered off course. Really it should have followed the rest of my body’s trajectory, but for some reason it didn’t (which I’m sure wasn’t my fault—okay it probably was). My leg banged into the dresser. This caused massive pain and much crying and a little bit of blood (those aren’t razor cuts on my leg, but rather they are scabs from the healing scrapes where the dresser bit me).

After hobbling to take the kids to school, I went to Urgent Care. They took some x-rays and said it wasn’t broken and sent me on my way with an air cast and some crutches.

I wasn’t able to use the crutches because I’m a weakling and don’t have the upper body strength for it (my arms almost hurt worse than my leg—yeah, I need to do some weight lifting or something). So I spent a week limping around when I had to, but spending most of my time in bed with my leg propped up and some ice—which also hurt (even running my hand down my leg hurt). I’m not a wimp, mind you. I have a pretty high pain tolerance, but this H-U-R-T. So I limped back to Urgent Care last Thursday. They said I should follow up with my Dr. because it “might” be broken after all (hairline fracture). So I set up an appointment and went yesterday (it takes a while to get an appointment with my Dr. sometimes).

And now I have this new stylish footwear:

I’ve been booted. This new footwear will be part of my wardrobe for the next four weeks.

As I said, being absent from the blog during the contest was not my intention. And because I didn’t get to do all the fun things I wanted to, I’m going to extend the contest so I can have the chance to do what I want. And since this is my blog—well, I can.

So the blog contest will be extended through April 30th. That gives me time next week to do all the fun things I wanted to do (and still time to prop my leg up and ice it to reduce the massive swelling that gives me an elephant ankle).

Now I’m going to hobble into the house to grab some lunch and get back out here for some writing time before the day gets away from me (it’s on the run and I’m falling behind).

Write on!

This contest is to celebrate When the Butterflies Came by Kimberley Griffiths Little. This is an AWESOME middle grade novel!!

I’ll be posting a full review of it within the next few days, but let me just say that I LOVE it!! I’m a fan of Kimberley’s other books (The Healing Spell and Circle of Secrets), but I really think this is my favorite. It’s not only a great coming of age story, but I loved, loved, loved the mystery aspect of this one in particular.

Okay, it may be partly due to the fact that I love butterflies and this book was chock full of them, but this book also has mysterious keys and mysterious people. Yeah. L-O-V-E!!

But I’ll stop gushing because I promised a review later, and you just want to know about the Contest!

First, the prizes!

There will be several winners (and more prizes to come over the next few days), but here are the main prizes.

GRAND PRIZE!

One (1) grand prize winner will get:

A hardcover copy of When the Butterflies Came with a beaded bookmark made by myself, a Live Butterfly Garden (see picture below), and a secret butterfly craft made by me. This may be any one of the following: an origami butterfly, a butterfly mobile made from repurposed water bottles, a butterfly bracelet, a butterfly necklace, a butterfly scrabble tile charm/necklace—who knows what I’ll choose (thus, the word “surprise”)?

(okay, this is an ARC copy of the book because the hardcover was in the house and I was in my shed and I was too lazy to go inside to get the book for pictures—but I promise you’ll get a hardcover)

This is a close-up of the bookmark (it’s purple because I love purple, but I also have orange, blue, pink, green, or white butterflies and can make one of those colors if you prefer):

And here’s the butterfly garden—you send off the coupon in the box and they’ll send you the caterpillars and food. Then you watch the metamorphosis and when the butterflies emerge, you can release them! YAY!

FIRST PRIZE!

One (1) first prize winner will receive:

A Butterfly and Flowers themed Sun Catchers project. This is a kit that includes paint, a brush, the plastic sun catchers, and some window suction cups. You paint the sun catchers and hang them in your window—yanno so they can catch the sunlight. Fun! The first prize winner will also receive  some When the Butterflies Came bookmarks to share and a secret butterfly craft made by me. This may be a beaded bookmark, or any one of the other crafts I mentioned above in the grand prize section.

SECOND PRIZES

Two (2) second prize winners will receive a When the Butterflies Came bookmark and a surprise butterfly craft made by me.

So . . . how do you enter? It’s so easy!! All you have to do is leave a comment telling me if you like butterflies. If you like them, tell me one reason why. If you don’t like them, tell me one reason why. That’s it!

Now, if you want more chances to win, you can spread the word about this contest (with a link) on your blog, Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere on the internet and leave links to where you shared the love.

The contest will run from now until April 17th (that’s next Wednesday).

Best of luck!

Contest on!

I was going to post a contest today, but I’m not quite ready with all the pictures I need. First of all, I injured my ankle on Thursday (“it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt”—truer words were never spoken). According to the x-rays (yes, it hurt enough that I went for x-rays), nothing is broken—just severely bruised (they called it acute bruising, but there’s nothing cute about it). They gave me an air cast (a brace that has inflatable things on each side for support—it’s weird and probably alien made) and told me to stay off of it for the next 2-3 days. So I did—mostly. I was a good girl and propped it up and wore the wrap and the cast, but they also gave me crutches.

Yeah. In case you weren’t aware of it, using crutches takes upper body strength. And I learned just how little I had. *sigh* My arms ached within minutes of crutch use. No kidding. And every time I used them my poor arms burned and begged. And I was huffing and puffing like I was going to blow down the little pigs’ houses (like I had enough breath left for that?). So I gave up the crutches, spent most of my time in bed, and hobbled/hopped whenever I needed to walk anywhere. In spite of my walking on it, it’s doing much better today. So why no contest?

Things got crazy with J’s online school today and I haven’t had time to take pictures (yes, I need pictures of the prizes to entice and excite—I hope they will anyway). I’m going to take pictures now though and should be all ready for contest posting tomorrow morning. YAY!

Okay, enough about that. This is supposed to be a Monday’s Muse post. Let’s get to it.

As many of you know, I’ve been taking some classes from Joyce Sweeney. It’s a ten week course and today was lesson nine. I’m sad that there’s only one more week to go, but I’ve learned so much I’ll probably need another ten weeks to absorb it all and get my notes typed up.

In addition to the course by Joyce, I’ve also been studying some books on writing. Right now I’m reading James Scott Bell. And I’m amazed. It’s crazy that after almost eleven years of writing, I’m still learning new things about the craft. It’s true that you never stop learning. And some of the things I thought I knew, I realize I wasn’t as knowledgeable as I thought.

For example, at the beginning of the class with Joyce, she had us grade ourselves (A-D) on these novel elements: Plot, Voice, Structure, Concept.

I gave myself the following scores :

Plot- B

Voice- B

Structure- C

Concept- D

Okay, so I have a big ego.

After taking the course and learning about each of these four elements, I’d rate myself thusly:

Plot- C

Voice- B

Structure- D

Concept- B

I always thought I was pretty good at plot, but I discovered it’s one of my weakest areas. Yikes. There’s a lot more that goes into plotting that I realized. And for some reason I had it in my head that plotting and structure were basically the same. Yeah. WRONG. Joyce said structure is the vehicle that carries the reader through the story and plot is the road the structure travels upon. Who knew (probably you, but it was news to me)?

So now my eyes are open and I’m moving forward armed with knowledge and Joyce’s awesome plot clock. I so wish I could share that with you! It changed the way I’ll plot forever. But it’s her secret weapon and she only shares it with those who take her class. Sorry. No, truly, I am!

All this knowledge won’t guarantee me a perfect novel with amazing sales, but it sure has improved the way I write and even the way I think about writing. With what I’ve learned from these newest founts of knowledge, I’ve come up with some new methods.

Two of my favorites are my book planner and my scene planner. These will be huge in helping me organize my structure and make sure my novel is delivering the emotion it needs (did you know that structure is what delivers the emotion? I didn’t). Once I get the planners typed up, I’ll share them with you.

I’m excited about writing again and can see ways to revise my past work and write future work that I never before imagined.

Hope things are going well for all of you! See you tomorrow for the contest posting (seriously, it will be here).

Write on!

They gave us permission to be a social media slacker! That’s right, we don’t have to feel guilty about ignoring our blogs or Twitter or Facebook or any of it! Writing is what’s most important. And while I knew this deep down, I still felt guilty for not updating my blog, Facebook, Twitter on a regular basis.

I don’t have to feel guilty anymore! Yay!! I can be a slacker because Holly Root and Barbara Poelle said I can. That doesn’t mean I won’t ever update anything, because I will, but I won’t feel guilty if I don’t.

The most important thing is that I get words on the pages of my manuscripts. If that means not updating for weeks or months, I’m okay with that and I hope my followers will be too. And for all my writing friends out there, don’t let guilt force you into social media. If you don’t want to do it or don’t have time—then don’t!

Write on!

Motivation has been a big issue for me. I want to write, but then I sit down at the laptop and get sidetracked by other things (internet, email, etc.). I’ve tried making word count goals in the past with little success.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem revising a manuscript (for the most part)—that’s not my issue. In fact, I’d rather revise a manuscript than write a new one. So my lack of motivation usually only plays a factor when I’m writing something new.

And it’s frustrating. I plan it out the new novel, make my 3×5 index cards, figure out my characters, research—basically anything and everything other than writing the actual novel. But I should be good to go with all this information at hand, right? It should work that way, but it doesn’t.

Sometimes these novels will get started and never finished. I still love the characters and the story, but something happens that distracts me. Sometimes it’s not knowing exactly where the story is going (if I haven’t plotted it all out or if things changed from the plan as I wrote). Sometimes it’s a new shiny idea that just won’t wait. Of course then something interrupts the new shiny idea and the cycle starts all over again.

Yes, this means I have several story beginnings saved on my laptop. This, my friends is NOT good.

In the past, I loved November because of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo or NaNo). Even if the rest of the year in writing wasn’t a great one for me, I could always count on November to get me to finish a previously started novel or write an entirely new piece. But last year I didn’t finish a novel. I began one, but that’s as far as it went.

So, I’ve been searching for a new motivational tool to keep me on track and keep me writing. And this week I found just what I was looking for on the Operation Awesome blog!

Here is the post.

It is a Microsoft Excel document that tracks the writing and goals and is full of pure awesome. Why do I think this is better than my previous goal setting and charts? Because this one rocks. First of all, it does all the calculations for me (yeah, I’m mathematically challenged). All I have to do is type in my starting word count and then input the word count for my writing days and it will tell me how many words I’ve written. Then I can take that number and plug it into the chart for the month. I get to see how many words I’ve written for the week and the month, and whether or not I’ve met my goal. I can keep track of more than one book/project on the WIP Word Calculator. And the Stats page shows me a break down of all the data. In the end, I’ll see how many words I’ve written for the year! Awesome.

The other thing about it is that it’s customizable. The amazing Abby Annis—the genius behind the spreadsheet—left a link in the Operation Awesome blog post to show how to customize. With everything else going on in my life, I decided to schedule my writing days as Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I also set my word count goal at a low 500 words per day. Why so low? Sometimes I work on a picture book manuscript. Also, I didn’t want the pressure of starting out with a big number (1000 seems like a lot when I’m staring at it on the page). But another great thing about this is that if I decide to change my goal later, I can—and only for the months I want to change it.

So far, this is working great! And I’m excited about it so I think it will continue to work. It’s true I’ve done a similar thing on paper in the past, but there’s something about having it in the Excel format that is making a difference (well, not having to calculate my daily word count by hand is a plus).

If you’re struggling to stay motivated and you have Excel (I had to install it because when I installed my Office suite I didn’t include it—never used it because it’s intimidating), I highly recommend giving this a try.

Do you have a method to keep you motivated? What is it? How does it work?

Write on.

2. The kids have been on spring break for the last two weeks(they go back on Monday). We’ve had fun, but I’m ready for them to go back.

3. I’ve started a new YA. I can’t believe how much I LOVE this story and characters. I’m having more fun writing it than I’ve ever had writing anything before. Hopefully the love lasts and the words will keep flowing.

4. I’ve been taking some classes from Joyce Sweeney (Valentine’s Day present from my awesome hubby). I’m enjoying the classes and am learning so much—but with everything going on, I’m falling behind in my homework. Oops. Good thing they’re flexible. I hope to get all caught up by the end of next week.

5. The day started out sunny and nice, but the wind picked up a few hours ago and blew in a storm. We’ve had the first few sprinkles of spring rain! Yay.

Hope you all have a great weekend! Oh, and I’ll be posting a contest here soon. Don’t miss it!

Write on.

I also asked that you print out the first page of your novel/work in progress and compare your work to that of the published authors you chose. Upon comparing, you were to write down anything this exercise told you about your voice—was is something unique that would catch an editor’s or agent’s eye?  Or was it too similar to everything out there?

If you’ve done your homework, make sure you have it with you as we proceed. Hopefully you learned something about your voice. When I did this exercise (yes, I did the homework too), I discovered the books I pulled off my shelves were all written in the first person point of view. I wanted to be fair so I put some of them back and pulled down books written in third person point of view. Still, it was interesting to note that many of my favorite books are in 1st person POV. Mostly interesting because I tend to write in third person.

In Les Edgerton’s Finding Your Voice, I found chapter six (Elements of Personality or “Voice”) particularly useful (the whole book is great and I highly recommend it). Here he tells the reader that “the most vital element in the writer’s voice is the tone you tell the story or write the article in.” He goes on to say that tone “echoes the emotional stance directed at the material by the author.” Tone gives a clue to the reader (whether they—or you—realize it or not). It helps them connect to the emotion they should be feeling. Look at your page again. Does your tone match the emotion you want the reader to feel? If not, why? My tone didn’t match what I was trying to convey at all. It was dark and serious and rather depressing.

Go back and pull one of the books you chose to evaluate—read that first page again and figure out the tone the author is conveying.

Edgerton says the next element of voice is the vocabulary we use in our writing. Even if the tone is true in our writing, the vocabulary can ruin our voice. You’ve heard someone say a particular author’s writing sounds “writerly,” right (possibly someone said this about your writing)? It’s those darn word choices.

But it’s not really our fault—blame it on the teachers who from the time we were in grade school hammered the “proper” way to write into us. Remember the adjectives and adverbs we were encouraged to put into our writing? The more “writerly” the better! If we strayed from the “proper” way we were penalized with bad grades.

But we’re adults now (or most of you reading this will be). Guess what? We don’t have to listen to our grade school teachers anymore. For our writing to be “unique” we need to use words that are organic to us—words we know and use, not words we’ve looked up in a thesaurus to replace the word we should have used in the first place (come on, you know you’ve done it)—otherwise we end up coming off as “writerly.”

Let me give you an example from my own work. In my manuscript, I had a character running her hand over a wooden chest’s “intricately” carved lid. Okay, so intricately is a word I feel comfortable using in everyday conversation—I didn’t use a thesaurus to get it—but I’m more likely to use “elaborately” (and so is my middle grade aged character)—so I changed it. The sentence reads much better and more “true” now.

It’s not all about you when you’re writing! You may be the most sophisticated, knowledgeable person out there—maybe you graduated top of your class from an ivy league school—but if you’re writing a middle grade character, you’re going to have to watch your word choices (unless your character is a prodigy or something). Use words familiar to yourself—AND your characters.

Pay attention to your vocabulary. Don’t use a word just to be “original” or “unique” because it may come off being “writerly” and no one wants that (okay, maybe someone does—but not most agents/editors)!

After tone and vocabulary, Edgerton discusses imagery. Did you know that’s part of your voice? In order to be consistent with our natural voice, we have to make sure we use images (metaphors, similes, description) that are consistent with what we know—but also with what our characters know. We may have been to a hot springs, but we can’t use that as a metaphor if our character is from a planet with no water and hasn’t ever seen one.

Look at your first page again. If you have any images in that first page (and I’d be shocked if you didn’t), are they consistent with what both you and your main character know? Mine weren’t!

I believe all this talk and the examples and the homework and everything can all be boiled down to one thing:

Be yourself.

You’re probably more interesting than you think you are. And most of us have had so many experiences that we’re a gold mine of characteristics to use when creating our characters. Most if not all of us put a bit of ourselves into our characters anyway—so why do we try so hard to keep our personalities out of our writing? Stop it.

Be yourself.

Let the words flow onto the page as they naturally would. If “depict” isn’t a word that you or your character would naturally use—find a synonym that is.

One caution here. I’m not saying write exactly how you speak. Your writing voice and your speaking voice should be similar, but not exact. Your writing voice needs to be better but still way below the “writerly” level (read pompous, arrogant, and not easy to relate to—using words to impress rather than convey detail).

My eyes were open by these exercises. I mentioned earlier that most of my favorite books are written in first person—but I write in third person. So guess what? I tried rewriting the first chapter of one of my novels in first person. What a difference! My character leaped onto the page. Seriously—things went onto the page that I would have NEVER considered putting in there—but they’re totally consistent and true to both my character and my own voice. And guess what? The tone is now exactly what I intended it to be. It’s amazing.

I’m not saying I’ve never written in first person before—I have—but this particular novel is a middle grade novel, and I read or heard somewhere (probably a long time ago) that third person past tense was the more “acceptable” middle grade point of view—so that’s how I approached this book. But I love the first person present tense for this novel—it works. So I’m redoing the whole thing.

Anyway, I’ve gone on way too long here, so let me close by saying this:

The thing that makes your manuscript the “unique” work the editors and agents all say they want is your own “unique” voice. Without it, you’ll sound just like every other writer out there. And none of us are like anyone else. That’s the point of this world. We’re all unique—and that special uniqueness that makes us US needs to make it into our writing.

Don’t be writerly, be a writer.

Be yourself.

Write on!

Yes, you read that correctly.

Many of you know my brain works in mysterious ways (I know, you thought only God did that). Some of you might question whether my mind works at all. Let me explain my chocolate muse. (hmm is that kind of like a chocolate bunny?)

As I ate chocolate today (part of any balanced diet), I started thinking about chocolate—and writing—and chocolate—and writing. Yes, they’re two of my favorite things, but that’s not the point (I do have one, I promise).

I thought about all the different kinds of chocolate out there on the market—way too many to start naming—and yet there are new chocolates hitting the market all the time.

With so many different chocolates, there’s something for everyone. Sure, there are best sellers out there, but there are also specialty chocolates or lesser known brands/kinds that still have a small to medium sized following. And all that chocolate on the market doesn’t mean they should stop making chocolate—they just need to make it different than the chocolate already out there if they want greater success.

Let’s take Hershey’s Kisses, for example. The company didn’t stop with the basic Kiss in the silver wrapper—it was great, but could be so much more. So they added white chocolate and called them Hugs. They added caramel, cordial cherry crème, airy chocolate, etc. They changed it up and made it new (and they keep doing it).

Now, there are people out there who only like the original Kisses, there are others (myself included) who prefer the “filled” Kisses (cordial cherry Kisses are my favorite). Something for everyone (well, except those chocolate haters out there—you’re DNA is messed up ).

You probably already see what chocolate has to do with writing, but I’m going to explain it anyway. Just like the chocolate makers have to make their product different, so do we as writers. Not every new chocolate concoction will be a hit—and neither will our writing. In spite of all this, chocolatiers continue to make chocolate, and we should continue to make stories—we’re told to make them unique.

Ugh! There’s that horrible word that’s thrown at us by agents and editors. It’s awful because it’s so open to interpretation. Okay, dictionary.com says “unique” means:

1. existing as the only one or as the sole example; single; solitary in type or characteristics: a unique copy of an ancient manuscript.

2. having no like or equal; unparalleled; incomparable: Bach was unique in his handling of counterpoint.

Three and four deal with species and problems/solutions so I left them out.

5. not typical; unusual: She has a very unique smile.

So we use the Kiss recipe (let’s pretend we read it somewhere) and make a cordial cherry filled chocolate, but instead of shaping it like a Kiss, we make it a square. According to definition five, that’s unique. It was also a fairly simple change—all we did was change the shape. And that’s the problem.

Writing something unique is easy. Writing something unique that an editor or agent would want is much harder. They have so many different varieties of chocolate thrown at them everyday that your product has to really stand out—and making it similar to something else but changing its shape isn’t going to cut it.

Your voice. I’m not saying you can rewrite Twilight using your voice and have it be a bit hit. (would you even want to?) First of all, vampires are way over done—baked to death (which is what used to happen if they went out in the sun).

Still, your unique voice is what will have agents and editors scrambling to represent your writing—well, that and good writing. But I’ve read/heard some agents and editors say that if the voice is there, they can fix everything else. How do we get our voice to be the one they want?

There are books, vlogs, webinars, conference talks, etc. about this topic—but it’s often the most difficult thing to figure out. This post is already way too long, so I’ll stop here for today and discuss voice further in my next post(s).

If you’ve already mastered your voice, fantastic! Please feel free to share any tips or tricks I might miss in my future posts. For those still searching (or if you just want to do it), here’s some homework:

Grab a few (or several) of your favorite books (or bring them up on your e-reader)—they don’t have to be best sellers, but it would be great if at least one was. Make sure they’re from different authors. Read the first page of each book. Compare each author’s work to the others you’ve selected. Do you see a difference in voice? What makes them different?

Now print out the first page of your novel or work in progress  and read it (reading it off your screen is cheating). Compare your writing to the work of the published authors. What does it tell you about your voice? Is your voice something “unique” that would catch an editor’s or agent’s eye? Write down why you think it would or wouldn’t. Hang onto that paper—we’ll come back to it.

Happy Monday!

Write on!