Workout

I stole their voices, their stories, their craft.

Reading while writing was an awful distraction for many years.

It filled me up.

I felt like a copycat.

I was anything but original and originals are required. Story, craft. You have both? You have award-winning best-sellers.

So I avoided it. Reading, I mean. But I could never stay away for too long.

So I started small. Strengthening my writing muscles. Keeping the story simple so I can perfect the craft.

Slow. Very slow.

But at some point 100 pages into writing for three winters, it all changed.

I wouldn't steal anymore: I played around.

I felt empty to create while full of inspiration.

I added complexity and it worked.

There were layers.

I kept going, writing while reading.

Learning from all, reading while writing.

My craft finally firm. My voices mine.

I'm firm. I'm mine. I'm ready.

I'm free to read while writing. 

My Voice

"The wind ruined the birds' nest," my husband notes. "Look."

I abandon my laptop and walk up to our sunroom facing our backyard. Threads of God-knows-what (dried leaves?) mixed with spiderwebbery cotton puffs (moss?) fall down from the top of our glass door frame straight down to the wooden deck's floor.

"Don't dare open this door."

I won't.

"It's disgusting."

It is.

I roll my eyes at this mess while my heart sinks with sorrow and pity for these poor creatures. "They are talking," I spot two birds sunbathing at the shed's ceiling. Their house just collapsed and yet there they are, not a worry in the world. "Can you hear them?"

I bird-talk:

Where are we going to live now?

We have no house for Spring and Summer.

I don't know.

We are too chubby to fly up and down from that maple tree.

I'm aghast.

It's been seven years since writing became my side kick and I still feel like I'm tapping on this thing called voice (my guts sink, twist and flip when it comes paired with the word 'unique'. No joke.). Authors talk about their voices all the effing time, but honestly nobody can really grasp or explain what it truly is. But readers can feel it. Make no mistake.

Readers feel our voice every time they cry, laugh, startle, disgust, keep going, can't put it down, can't quit talking about it for days, weeks, months.

I too can feel my voice. Mature, crisp, straightforward, poetic, visceral, crazy, honest, brutal. My way.

I can feel how much I changed, improved, developed. I can feel the disconnect in early works. The urge to rewrite some of it comes to surface. But I don't. I won't. The window is closed.

There's always an open door though.

My currents. My work-in-progresses. All of us evolving together.

I feel my voices. Such and such are talking, but it doesn't make sense. Rethink, rework, craft. Bang.

I feel my voices. Such and such make me angry when arguing, make me laugh when snapping, make my stomach tremble when starring, warm my heart when kissing.

I voice my many voices across a single manuscript. This is quite unique.

Now it makes sense. Total sense. I make sense.

I close the door and leave no windows open when my many voices flow through and beyond.

Chapter 21

I press send.

Oh, the joy of crafting a chapter out of the blue, the first one I didn't plan on and yet I intentionally planted tons of Easter Eggs. Now I can't see my book without it anymore. This. One. Stays.

Oh, the joy of sharing my original, hand-picked words with my test readers. I love it. I hope they love it too.

Chapter 21. Wow. I am so far on this road now and yet so far from the end. Patience is something I need loads of and do not possess much. I require every ounce of it that I can get, every gram I can master.

Breathe.

You know what I'm talking about if you've been here before.

Breathe.

This is a lengthy journey and I loathe the length. They make me dizzy. They make me nauseous. I just need to get out of this car. Yet the car won't stop, can't stop, won't brake, can't break. I'm here until the very end.

It does not get easier, though. It gets more bumpy. More complex. More complicated. More delicious. It's addictive.

21 chapters.

There's nothing simple about this love story. I was deceived by my own naivete. What a fool my characters made of this amateur of a novelist. They have layers - so many and too many of them - and working through them all is beautiful.

A labor of love. A labor of patience. A labor of writing.

I open the file, here we go, Chapter 22.