Finding your voice: Part 9 of 10

We're almost done. We'll recap everything in the last post and I'm hoping that the simple advice on what to do has somehow filtered through practically. Practical advice is hard to give. Like telling the worried mother to stop worrying. Great advice it may be, but how? These posts on finding your voice have focussed on one thing primarily, and that's the way you see the world by the voice that is your companion in your head. That voice rambles on tirelessly all day making judgements about the things you see with your eyes, the smells around you, the voices and sounds you hear and the things you touch. That voice is confident in its statements, bold in its obstinacy. It doesn't face criticism most of the time unless you let it out. At those times, when you write something and someone criticises it, you are likely to sulk. Your thoughts are filled with defeatism, and you're less likely to be bold in your next attempt.

But that doesn't stop the inner voice, it continues and even when you sleep, it continues to assault you with a biased, unedited, review of the day, embellished with commentary that you didn't ask for. It presents the situations where you were weak and gives you advice on how you could have performed better. Sometimes it doesn't seem like that voice is on your side, but it is. It's your friend, it's trying to help you make you a better person, but oh, don't let it out or you'll be attacked again!

So my advice, in this Part 9, is that life is short. Really short. Wasting time on self pity, self abasement, inactivity due to unseen obstacles, isn't really positive. You can't do too much harm in writing. You can be criticised and you will be, but at the end of the day, the impact of that criticism is deserved on a number of levels. It was you that wrote that and not writing it doesn't make it less true that you believe it. The only difference is that now, the world knows.

There's no time to waste in feeling disappointed in not writing, write. There's no time to be critical about producing your best work and therefore producing none. Produce good works and bad ones. Produce insanely great sentences and massively boring ones. Write clever and inspirational thoughts and idiotic and nonsensical ones. Mix and match and keep going. Keep the critics employed, after all, they've got nothing else to do. It takes great courage to expose your thoughts in the face of certain criticism, no matter what topic you choose. If you choose to reflect on humanity and bring forth your ideas on racial separation, expect to be hit with a torrent of negativity. If you fantasise about angels and demons and compare them to the religious icons of the day, expect to have some bad press. If you write about vampires and life sucking demons, then publicists might relegate your books to the horror and fiction section for adults over eighteen. That thing you thought was a children's story, it aint!

Write mainly because you want to get better and because the more you write, the better you'll become. The more you run the stronger you become. It doesn't happen overnight. The first time you venture out you might make a few metres and stop puffing and panting. In your minds eye, you can already see yourself prancing like an antelope, moving effortlessly and gracefully. You're the epitome of fitness. Your mind isn't very practical, but it's amazingly good at seeing into the future. It know, unlike your body, that if you keep jogging everyday, then those changes will happen. You will get stronger, you will get better and you will be able to do what's in your mind's eye. It doesn't happen overnight. And the more you write, the better you get. Like running, you'll probably be disappointed with the initial attempts. That doesn't sound much like John Grisham or Jeffery Deaver (two of my favourites). And you're right, it doesn't and it never will. Your mind will create you but you need to get that stuff out of your head onto paper so that you can see it. The more you see it on paper, the better you'll be at being able to shape it.

Get it out of your head onto paper.

Write like your life depended on it. Write everyday, like you only had a few more minutes to spare. Get to a point where you consider it finished, put it aside, and move on to the next project. Some pieces you won't like. But if you don't continue writing, you won't get better. You must learn to take the good with the bad. A bit of both goes a long way. I have my favourite authors but not all their books are that good. I loved Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose but I find his other books too academic. Too verbose and focussed on minutia. They're dense and take a long time for me to read. I learn a lot, but connecting the dots take a while. But that's what he is, a professor of semiotics. A man who studies words, linguistics and language for a living. This is a man who could write an entire novel on the word "and." Stephen King too has his moments for me. His early books were fast and enjoyable. Fun books for me to read. Then the books took on an epic air. Large volumes. Pages on detail and he began to lose me. As you can tell, my ability for sustained concentration is very limited. Like most readers, I expect them to connect a few of the dots. Fill in some of the story themselves so that I don't have to describe absolutely everything.

Write, publish then move on. Life is short, time is of the essence, you have things to say, you cannot afford to wait for the perfect sentence, just say what's on your mind right now, and even if it doesn't look right, move on to something else.

You'll only get better with time and practice.