On Writing

Finding Your Written Voice

Begins With Determining What You Value

Photo by Windows on Unsplash

Why do I write? Because I personally feel that writing, at its best, is the most honest form of art. Creating a work of fiction lights me up and allows me to use every facet of my brain: creativity, critical thinking, imagination, empathy, and sleuthing skills, as well as memorization of grammar and spelling rules and other conventions of writing. It also forces me to simultaneously track details — small and large, critical and subtle, chronological and stylistic. It’s good for my brain, and when I get it right, writing is incredibly satisfying.

My goal or mission is to write stories that transport and uplift people, and most of all, take my readers on a journey. I sometimes write to work through my own issues — and if I feel a piece I’ve written contains wisdom for others, I’ll share it. I want to tell true-to-life stories that describe our complicated paths to reaching human connection; I write stories of personal resilience, stories of people who fight for their dreams with persistence; I write stories of forgiveness, and I try to give readers insight into what happens when we meet the special people who encourage us to open our hearts, once more.

“The answers [to these questions] are what we return to when a reviewer trashes your book. The answers are what we climb back to when we’re plagued with crippling self-doubt. Because we know there’s something larger at play — bigger than the story we’re editing or the book we’re writing,” writes Medium author Felicia C. Sullivan, in the article below.

How to Use Brand-Building Techniques to Find Your Voice as a Writer

Ms. Sullivan, a fiction and nonfiction author, also works in marketing. She describes a detailed process in which we can employ a framework used in brand-building to find our writerly voice. I recently adapted this framework to create a “brand personality” for my women’s fiction trilogy, The Inn at Verde Springs. Under the branding category of “Sincerity,” all three books are best described as “down to earth, small-town, real, and original.”…