Chuck Wendig On Finding Your Voice

I love it when Chuck Wendig talks about writing.

Recently Chuck gave an interview to 52 Reviews in which he mused about how to find your voice and what talent is.

How To Find Your Voice

Chuck Wendig says:

Every author decides to go on a grand adventure one day, and that grand adventure is to find her voice. She leaves the comfort of her own wordsmithy and she traipses through many fictional worlds written by many writers and along the way she pokes through their writings to see if her voice is in there somewhere. She takes what she reads and she mimics their voices, taking little pieces of other authors with her in her mind and on the page.

Is her voice cynical? Optimistic? Short and curt, or long and breezy? She doesn’t know and so she reads and she writes and she lives life in an effort to find out.

This adventure takes as long as it takes, but one day the author tires of it and she comes home, empty-handed, still uncertain what her voice looks like or sounds like.

And there, at home, she discovers her voice is waiting. In fact, it’s been there all along.

Your voice is how you write when you’re not trying to find your voice. Your voice is the way you write, the way you talk. Your voice is who you are, what you believe, what themes you knowingly and unknowingly embrace.

Your voice is you.

Search for it and you won’t find it. Stop looking and it’ll find you.

Profound.

I think that's true for many areas of human endeavour, you won't find what you're looking for 'out there,' (wherever 'out there' is) only when you look within. (By the way, Chuck also talked about this on his blog.)

What Talent Is

Another quotable quote:

52 Reviews: Speaking of 'simply writing' do you prescribe to the notion that success as a writer is more a measure of effort and dedication than actual talent? Creativity, in and of itself, seems to be pretty easy to come by while the tenacity to commit to the act of actually creating seems to be much more scarce.

Wendig: Talent is a function of excess desire. You really, really want something bad enough, you tend to manifest a "talent" for it. While I'm sure there's some argument to be made for the expression of genetics, I think mostly it's just -- if you really like architecture and have the desire to create architecture, you're probably going to manifest the "talent" as an architect.

Dedication and effort then turn that desire and talent into craft and creation. At least, in a perfect world

Chuck's Books

Since he's so nice in giving us these tangy nuggets of wisdom, I want to mention that Chuck Wendig has 4 books coming out in the next couple of months. Here's Chuck's description:

First up: Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits. The gods fell to Earth. One man wants revenge on them for taking his family away from him. It involves various divine wangs and vaginas. No, really.

Next: The Blue Blazes. Which we have in part already talked about but hey, I'll entice with: mystical drugs! goblins! roller derby girl gangs! the criminal underworld! the mythic underworld! subterranean zombie town! charcuterie! family betrayal!

Then: Under the Empyrean Sky, which is my young adult novel in a sunny dustbowl cornpunk future where a scrappy scavenger named Cael finds a secret forbidden garden in a world where their floating Empyrean overlords only allow them to grow a bloodthirsty variant of corn. It's got young love and adventure and piss-blizzards and motorvators and an agricultural pro-farmer pro-food message nestled in all the trappings. John Hornor Jacobs called it Of Mice and Men meets Star Wars, which I quite like.

Finally! Beyond Dinocalypse, book two of the Spirit of the Century trilogy. Pulp heroes. Two-fisted jet-pack action. An apocalypse of psychic hive-mind dinosaurs. PROFESSORIAL APES IN KILTS.

Anyone who wants to read the first chapter of Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits, it's up at io9. Also, information about where Chuck's books are on sale, and other good stuff, is available over at Terribleminds.

Other articles you might like:

- Creating The Perfect Sleuth
- How Many Books Would You Have To Write To Quit Your Job?
- Advice For New Writers

Photo credit: "Untitled" by Tucker Sherman under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

Jody Hedlund: Talent Is Overrated

Ever wondered whether you had what it took to be a writer? Ever feared you weren't talented enough? Jody Hedlund's article is a breath of fresh air sweeping away the poisonous cobwebs of doubt. She writes:

Talent is over-rated. Sure it may help to have a little bit of inborn gifting to help you get going on something. Talent may help you progress a little faster and easier.

But . . . talent isn’t necessary to succeed. ...

1. Stay determined. Decide you want to do it. Then make up your mind to stay the course.

2. Don’t get discouraged (at least not for long). Don’t listen to the naysayers who don’t think you have what it takes (especially if that naysayer is yourself!). And if you are discouraged, let it push you to try all the harder.

3. Don’t give up too soon. Stick with it even when you know you’re not all that good yet. Remember that most don’t start out as super stars, that they have to work hard for years before honing their skills.

4. Surround yourself with friends who share and understand the passion. They enrich the experience.

5. Don’t compare yourself to others. While I may have compared my son to others, he didn’t. He always focused on what he needed to do and never worried about how he measured up to others.

6. Work your tail off. Go at it until you sweat and feel pain.

7. Practice daily (or at least regularly). Come up with a routine. Have a checklist (my son did).

8. Continually push yourself to improve. Once you’ve mastered something, then learn something new.

9. Keep the vision of what you can become. Always see the product of what you will accomplish if you work hard enough.

10. Most of all enjoy it. Find pleasure in the process itself, even when it’s hard.

Visit Jody over at Jody Hedlund Author and Speaker and read the rest of her article, 10 Traits That Are More Important Than Talent.

I agree with each and every one of Jody's points, especially #7. It reminds of Kris Rusch's post, Writers and Business. Kris writes:

Talent is, as the cliché says, its own reward.

And its own curse.

I have watched hundreds—and I do mean hundreds—of talented writers fall by the wayside as their less-talented (by the judgment of a teacher, editor, critic) fellows succeed. Why are the less-talented succeeding where the talented fail?

The convention wisdom is that the less-talented appeal to the masses, as if the masses are a bad thing. But what’s really happening here is this: The so-called less talented feel that they must work harder to get where their talented peers are naturally. So the so-called less-talented end up with a work ethic where the talented have none.

But what about the people who are clearly better at writing than others in the class? Aren’t those people talented?

No. Sometimes what’s considered talent by a professor is simply that a writer writes to that professor’s taste. More often, however, the “talented” writer has had more practice than others and is more skilled by the time they get to the class.

The rest of Kris' article is equally great, a must read if you've ever felt droopy and depressed, wondering if you have enough talent to make it as a writer.

As Stephen King once wrote: Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

Amen.

Related links:
- Terry Gilliam: Talent is less important than patience
- Kris Rusch: The Value Of Imperfection
- The Key To Being Talented: Work Hard!

Photo credit: ♥JanltoilE♥

Terry Gilliam: Talent is less important than patience

I was reading a post on Kindle Boards and came across a reply by Bob Mayer where he quotes Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame. I loved it and thought I'd pass it on.

Talent is less important in film-making than patience. If you really want your films to say something that you hope is unique, then patience and stamina, thick skin and a kind of stupidity, a mule-like stupidity, is what you really need.
-- Terry Gilliam.

Mule-like stupidity ... I can do that! ;)

The Key To Being Talented: Work Hard!

Dean Wesley Smith writes that talent is "only a measure of craft at a certain point in time and nothing more," and that the way you become talented is by hard work and lots of it.

From Dean's blog post:

In school I hated writing because I was so bad at it. If I had listened to all the people who told me I had no talent for writing, I would have quit four decades ago. No, make that five decades ago, because all my early report cards said I had no talent for writing.

Now, after millions and millions of words practiced, many books and stories published, I get comments all the time like, “You are a talented writer, of course you can do it.”

Or one I got the other day. “You have the talent to write fast.”

Well, when I started to get serious about fiction writing, it took me hours and hours to do one 250 word page. Then that page would be so poorly written and riddled with mistakes that it got tossed away more often than not. (Remember, I was working on a typewriter.) Yup, I was a “naturally talented” fast writer. NOT!
....
The real bottom line is that to get past this myth, you have to believe in yourself and ignore everyone else’s belief system about you. Learn from others, but ignore what they say about your “talent.” Because the moment you take that alien belief system into your own mind and believe it, either good or bad, you are doomed.

Although I am a big fan of Dean's blog, this particular blog post is a gem. If you're a writer who has ever been intimidated by the question, "Am I talented?" this is a must-read. Enjoy!

Head on over to Dean's post: Chapter 12: Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: The Myth of Talent

Photo credit: DesignSwan