Your writing style should be as unique as a fingerprint. Deriving inspiration from the masterworks of the past is certainly helpful. However, it is only when you delve deeply into your intuitive mind that your own voice can emerge. Don’t chase after fleeting trends. Stephen King has criticized “the deliberate turning toward some genre or type of fiction in order to make money.” According to him, it simply won’t work. “People who decide to make a fortune writing like John Grisham or Tom Clancy produce nothing but pale imitations, by and large, because vocabulary is not the same thing as feeling and plot is light-years from the truth as it is understood by the mind and the heart.” As Emerson puts it more bluntly, “Imitation is suicide.” How can you ensure that your writing radiates authenticity?
In our meeting on November 8, Thaisa Frank will guide us through the process of finding your writer’s voice.
About: Thaisa’s most recent novel, Heidegger’s Glasses, takes place in the mythical haven of an underground mine during WWII, the safety of which is threatened forever. It was published in 2010, reissued in paperback in 2011, and sold to ten foreign countries before publication. She is also the author of Sleeping in Velvet and A Brief History of Camouflage, both on the bestseller list of the San Francisco Chronicle. Thaisa has received two PEN awards and her stories have been widely anthologized. She has published critical essays on writing and art, and is the author of the Afterword to Viking/Penguin’s most recent edition of Voltaire.
When: Monday, November 8th at 7pm
Where: Zoom – Members will be receiving an email with the Zoom invite
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If you aren’t on our event email list yet, you can get a zoom meeting invite by contacting Tatyana Grinenko (pr@southbaywriters.com) who will add your email to the South Bay Writers publicity and Constant Contact list.