Okay, well not quite literally. That would be weird and uncouth, and I really don’t like climbing trees. Perhaps we’ll let that one slide past as one of those cushy cosy metaphors us writers are supposed to use when discussing anything.
What I am referring to, in a very real sense, is my writer’s voice. I partook in my very first writing session — proper writing session — of the year yesterday, where I actually wrote new words into A PROMISE OF DEATH. I hadn’t written on this manuscript since December 16th, and on my first writing session last Tuesday, I realised the start of this MS was such a mess I should just scrap it and start again.
I thought at first what I had written was a false start to this book. After doing so much research and characterisation over the holidays I thought I should scrap what I had and bring it up to date with my current level of thinking.
Yet, I saw the real truth when I put fingers to keyboard yesterday (yes, I’m back to drafting on the screen and not longhand, but I’ll save that story for another time) and the words that came out just clicked. They were arranged in such a way I felt proud (but not overly proud, it is still a first draft) that I had created those sentences. The words read with a certain music, a certain vibe, that said Girl, you are ready to pub-lish!
Now, I might sound big headed here, but a solid voice is something I’ve been looking for quite some time, and something I thought I wouldn’t find yet. When I discovered it there on the page, yesterday, it was like a Mind Boner. I saw it and I thought, this is me.
It’s not like I’ve been practicing. Like I said, I hadn’t written on this project since 16th December, in fact, I hadn’t written anything at all apart from a revised draft of my Creative Writing assignment. I should have been rusty. It should have been physically painful to make those words flow. And to start with I found it so hard to get back into the plot, to remember what drove my character.
But then it all started to come back to me as I hit the keyboard. And that’s when I realised who I am on the page, what drives me.