It’s week 15! of my NowNovel group coaching course. (December 13- 19) and I’m not near as together as I want to be. So I’m starting where I am and will make more of an effort to make the program work for me.
How? The answer to how is yes!
Yes that’s a book title. More about that later. For now … Week 15 is about developing your voice. Like I’ve done for the other weeks, I printed the workbook. Most weeks I even read the workbook. They’re all stacked neatly on my shelf.
I started reading week 15’s workbook and on page 1, the contents page, wrote a note to myself to try the “16 techniques to help you develop your unique writing voice”.
I kept reading. The 16 techniques started on page 8. They’re not explicit enough for me to act on so I’m going to add what I need so I can actually do the activity and hopefully benefit from them. Will I keep adding to this post? Will I make a page? Who knows? I might do both. For now I’m just stating my intent to follow through on the note I wrote to myself.
NowNovel Technique One: Read
“The original prompt: Read. And then read some more! Study other authors’ voices and try to identify what makes them different. Read authors with a strong voice, authors you admire, and think of three adjectives to describe their voice.”
What I’m going to do:
- Make a list of 5 novelists that I’ve read more than one of their books and some aspect of their voice and/or stories makes me think, “Wow!”
- Octavia Butler
- Toni Morrison
- J.D. Robb
- Anne Rice
- Diana Gabaldon
- Make a list of 3 adjectives to describe the voice of each of those novelists.
- I feel like this is an excuse/reason for me to reread some of my all time favorite books.
… to be continued. In the between time the NowNovel blog has some useful articles. I almost wandered off to the blog but instead gently went back to the week 15 workbook.