My Process, Part I

When I first begin a project, I have to find the narrative voice. With Sweet Divinity, this was easy. With Miranda, it took months, and let's just say there were a LOT of voices in my head! To find the narrative voice for my new project, tentatively titled My Literary Boyfriends, I started this way...

        I have two literary boyfriends and they haven’t the faintest clue about each other.  My American boyfriend is William.  A Southern gentleman with a lovely pair of melancholy eyes, an insight into the human heart unrivalled by any other, and a genius of language manipulation.  When we first met, I was intimidated by him—he was so confident, so smart, so…Southern.  And yes, maybe he tips the bottle a but too much, but I hardly care.  I’m completely smitten.
But what William doesn’t know is that long, long before I knew he existed, there was another lover.  A poet, a novelist, an observer of human emotion, morality, and candor.  Thomas.  My British beau.  Creator of the moors of Essex, the heart of Churchminster, the beauty of Tess.  He drew from me a sigh of longing that exuded all of my pent-up teenage emotion.  I love him.
These are my literary boyfriends.  The men with whom I fill my life.  My Southern gentleman.  My British beau.  Thornton Wilder wrote that people are meant to live two by two in this world.  I prefer three.  I’ve always been indecisive.  Don’t tell the boys.


This initial piece is narrated by the first voice I heard when I began exploring the concept of My Literary Boyfriends.  To be fair, it sounds a lot like me.  After all, William Faulkner is my literary boyfriend, but Thomas Hardy is in fact my literary husband.  When I think about these writers and my enduring love for them, what you just experienced is the voice I hear.  But the trick in writing in first person is letting the authentic voice of the novel come through your pen (or keyboard).  So while this was the first voice, it wasn't the right voice.  At least not to begin.  In the next post I'll share with you the second voice I encountered on my journey for a narrator.  Spoiler alert: It wasn't "the one" either.  That said, I really like her.  Get excited.

What I'm reading this week:
The Private Lives of the Tudors by Tracy Borman (I've only 60 pages to go!)
William Faulkner by Caroline Porter (though I'm skipping sections that contain spoilers of novels I've yet to read)
Absalom!  Absalom!  by Willliam Faulkner (my self-proclaimed "favorite book", though I haven't read it since grad school so I'm reminding myself why I love it)
The Spy by Paulo Coehlo (the cover is beautiful)