Monday, March 19, 2012

Introducing

Every writer's journey is varied and unique.  When I started writing I wrote for myself.  I wrote about things that interested me and things I needed to get off my chest and nonsense that attempted to be too much like the books I read.  But once you venture from the world of writing for yourself into the world of someday I'd like people to read this, you have to start considering what other people want to read.  The trick is to take your unique voice and make it just enough the same as what's available that people will be able to find it.  And just enough different than what's available that it interesting and new. 

While you are trying to hone who you are, not only do you have to fit some sort of "mass market" mold while still being an individual, you have to decide what type of writing you are going to do.  Then you take all of these pieces of yourself and wrap them up together and edit and rewrite until you think you have something wonderful.  In the course of discovering the something wonderful, sometimes you realize that clippings of the things you love were left on the floor as you got the wrapping just write.  Or you've abandoned things that did pretty well in order to find a greater number of readers.

The novel I'm writing was initially a series of funny true life stories followed by a lesson I had learned.  However I realized that as I'm not famous and, though the stories were funny, they weren't dramatically unique and that project was going to be really hard to sell.  So I switched to fiction because if I was going to work this hard at something, I wanted more people than just my mom to read it.  The other day I was looking at all my clippings lying on the floor and I wasn't quite ready to throw one of them in the trash.  And while in the shower, because that is were all my brilliant ideas come from, I realized a way I could do both and Mom Advice Mondays were born. 

Starting next week, each Monday you'll be able to find a little bit of mom advice I've learned, usually from doing things the wrong.  I'll relate some stories that I can laugh at now and hopefully you'll get a chuckle and a little bit of encouragement to keep on truckin' along the never ending road of parenthood.  We'll even have a few guest posts so if you've got a little bit of mom advice to share let me know.  See you next week.

2 comments:

  1. Can't wait! (And you're right -- all great ideas come in the shower.)

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  2. What a grand adventure you're creating! What a nice reason to look forward to Mondays.

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