Can we believe you, Mr. King?

An author with an authentic voice excites readers in a new way. Their stories feel persuasive, even when they’re built on a framework of outlandish acts or weird events. Consider the heroes and villains of Stephen King. Exhausted by the demands of real life, we can still find the energy to read more about Carrie White and her odd powers before sleep claims us. That’s because King accurately captures the truths of adolescence -- before his character starts burnin' down the house!

Mr. King, who has written 30 bestsellers, insists that he “never got to like Carrie White and …never trusted Sue Snell’s motives in sending her boyfriend to the prom with her.” But to get to the emotional core of his book “Carrie”, he spent a long time digging through his memories of high school, remembering how the “most reviled girls” in his class looked, acted and were treated.

Exploring those old recollections helps us to follow the dictum to “write what we know”. King believes that this directive should be interpreted in a broad way. So, if you're a lawyer or a school teacher, you shouldn't use your job to define the limits of your knowledge. Your work must incorporate stuff dredged up from the depths of feeling and whimsy. As Mr. King says, “If not for the heart and imagination, the world of fiction would be a pretty seedy place. It might not even exist at all.”

As far as I’m concerned, imagination is like that mist rising from the pond on rainy mornings. A photo might capture it, but good writing has a way of keeping it alive, long after the sun comes out.

Your Unmistakable Voice

Developing an authentic voice is often tough for new writers. An author's inner voice can easily be drowned out by the endless echoes we hear from publishers, performers, and those who seem more successful than we are. Even writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald, have admitted the challenge of hearing their true voice amid the noise of the literary marketplace.

Despite his success, Fitzgerald felt he'd allowed others to tell him "how to do, what to say" and that he was "only a mediocre caretaker" of his own talent. He said that the push and pull of other people's opinions "always confused [him] and made [him] want to go out and get drunk." This solution clearly had BIG drawbacks.

The challenge of heeding our artistic voice is even more difficult in today's loaded media environment. Nevertheless, developing that ability is essential because it adds power to good writing and fuels a writer's artistic growth. The most original and compelling writers are often those who develop a routine that blocks out the flood of cultural messages -- for at least part of the day. These breaks allow the writer to focus more clearly on the images and ideas they really must explore. During moments of closer listening, we give ourselves a chance to tune into the voice that is unmistakably ours, unequivocally unique. It is both a flowing current and a lifeboat.

As the Story Turns....into Poetry

Many writers draw inspiration from other authors' work -- then shape it into something truly novel. In the last year of his life, Raymond Carver stopped writing the vivid short stories for which he was best known and spent his final months writing poems that incorporated themes from Chekhov stories.

The method Carver used to do this writing was something he worked out with Tess Gallagher, his poet wife. She would get up in the morning and read a Chekhov story, then retell the story to Carver at breakfast. In the afternoon, Carver would read the story for himself and, later that evening, they'd discuss it together.

Over the course of several months, they discovered what Gallagher called "the poet in Chekhov" -- though Chekhov, too, had earned his fame as a master story writer. Carver would mark up the passages in Chekhov that appealed to his writing impulses, then start to compose around them. This elliptical process helped Carver to write poems that, in Gallagher's words, "allowed distinctions between genres to dissolve without violence or a feeling of trespass." After all this work, Carver's final book, "A New Path to the Waterfall", reads almost like a how-to manual for literary evolution. Makes me want to write a really good .... mess of words.

Live to Tell it

A great memoir doesn't just record the details of another person's life, it provides a new lens for examining worlds you may never visit. In recent years, the genre has produced books that re-shape our notions of poverty, addiction, and literary life. As Gabriel Garcia Marquez observes in his memoir, "Life isn't what one has lived, rather it is what one remembers and how one remembers it to tell to others."

Myths about the writing life are so widespread, it's hard to believe you'd ever meet a writer who isn't a drunk, a junkie, or a sex addict. In reality, it takes so much discipline to write, edit, publish, and sell sell sell your work, that most working writers have little time for dereliction. Vivir Para Contarla, by Garcia Marquez, offers an antidote to the image of the self-destructive scribe. His memoir is a picaresque blueprint for writers who dream of seeing their work in print. Like many authors, Garcia Marquez thought up his masterpieces while toiling for small, low-paying publications. The one thing he never overlooked, while knocking out stories and mooching meals, was to live with brio. He formed friendships with people from every profession. The dreams of idealistic politicians and diligent prostitutes formed part of his life story. And his life story shaped the visions of many authors who followed him. Reading his work makes you want to live, and write, like you really mean it.