Rod Raglin
This blog will touch on the experiences I have as a writer (not to be mistaken for my experience as a writer, i.e. how many books I've written, etc); the pleasure and the pain, the joy and the grief, the satisfaction and the frustration, the magic and the reality - have I left anything out, oh yeah, the rejection, rejection and more rejection, the humiliation and the embarrassment, the jealousy and the resentment - that pretty much covers it, except for why I do it which perhaps I'll realize along the way. Are you totally confused? Good, let's begin.
Which comes first, voice or craft?
In Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality in Your Writing, author Les Edgerton begins by blaming all the English teachers you had through elementary and secondary school for destroying your original voice.
Edgerton believes if you were allowed to just write “naturally”, not like how you were told to write and not like how you think a “writer” should write you’d have your original voice.
I thought learning how to write came first and voice came after that, and since it was all those English teachers who taught me how to write, including punctuation and grammar, I don’t think they’re really to blame if you can’t find your writing voice.
It appears the only people who are anxious about finding “their writing voice” are those who don’t write well. I advance the concept that once you learn how to write, and I mean actually put in those 10,000 hours to become reasonably adept at the craft, voice comes naturally.
And you know what? I think Edgerton believes that as well, because once I got past the idea this book was about magically finding your voice, I realized it was a book about how to write, and a solid one at that, and written in an easy, kind of folksy, non academic voice.
Edgerton has used the angst novice writers have about finding their voice as “a hook”, or as I use to explain to my sales staff, the USP – Unique Selling Proposition. This is to differentiate his “how to” book from all the rest.
And it worked, at least on me.
30
Video book reviews of self-published authors now at
Not Your Family, Not Your Friend Video Book Reviews: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCH45n8K4BVmT248LBTpfARQ
My new novels, FOREST – Love, Loss, Legend and The BIG PICTURE – A Camera, A Young Woman, An Uncompromising Ethic are available on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003DS6LEU and as e-books at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/raglin
Read Reviews https://readersfavorite.com:book-review:39014
Visit my publisher’s website for excerpts from, and buy links to my Eco-Fi series ECO-WARRIORS, that includes Spirit Bear, Eagleridge Bluffs, and Not Wonder More – Mad Maggie and the Mystery of the Ancients http://www.devinedestinies.com/?route=product%2Fauthor&author_id=92
More of my original photographs can be viewed, purchased, and shipped to you as GREETING CARDS; matted, laminated, mounted, framed, or canvas PRINTS; and POSTERS. Go to: http://www.redbubble.com/people/rodraglin
View my flickr photostream at https://www.flickr.com/photos/78791029@N04/
Or, My YouTube channel if you prefer photo videos accompanied by classical music
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsQVBxJZ7eXkvZmxCm2wRYA
