You know you want to write a book. I can help.
[image: Think-Like-a-Writer]My friend, sometime lyricist, and most excellent editor Tom Bentley has finally released a book on writing.
Think Like a Writer: How to Write the Stories You See is both practical and entertaining. Much like its author, come to think of it.
I’ll let Tom tell you about it:
… more … “Think Like a Writer (You Want This Book)”
Just as musicians don’t always make great actors, as any music video will show you, actors don’t always make great writers. Here’s an exception: The Making of the African Queen.
Katherine Hepburn’s account of the making of The African Queen is priceless, not just because of the story it tells, but because it is memoir done right. It doesn’t attempt to tell her life story as if it were an autobiography. It is simply a memoir of a particular event.
There are more books than you could read in a hundred years, even if that’s all you ever did. In a way, books are a commodity.
The firehose-stream of new books, both independent and traditionally published, makes individual books even harder to distinguish. Your only hope of being found is to focus relentlessly on the 1% which makes your book unique.
I’m not suggesting that you find a way to convince people that your book is unlike anything which has ever come before. If you’ve written a murder mystery, your book is 99% like every murder mystery since Poe invented the genre. If your book is a historical romance, ditto.
[image: photo http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1115981 by meral akbulut http://www.sxc.hu/profile/merala” width=”440″ height=”158″ class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-2710]
Replying to my newsletter signup welcome email, Rory asked about finding his blogging voice. My writing voice came so naturally to me that I had been writing for years before I met an aspiring writer who needed help finding their own.
To be sure we’re all talking about the same thing: “voice” is the unique way each of us makes word choices, uses syntax and punctuation and pacing, and blends and balances dialog and exposition.
While few of us will ever have the instantly identifiable voice of Raymond Chandler or Dr. Seuss, our fans should find something unique to recognize in our writing just as our loved ones recognize our voice, even through the heavily compressed medium of telephone voice services.
A few points about finding your voice:
[image: photo http://www.sxc.hu/photo/19949 by John Lee http://www.sxc.hu/profile/digi” width=”444″ height=”113″ class=”aligncenter size-full wp-image-2360]
… more … “6 Tools to Help You Find and Develop Your Blogging Voice”