Voice

I'm reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett and I can't put it down. It's one of the most well-written books I've read in a long time, the kind of book that inspires me to write. I've wanted to write a novel for as long as I can remember and this is the year that I'm actually taking the steps to make it happen. Which means I'm making myself write. Even if it sucks. Even if when I re-read what I wrote it reads like bad chick lit. The novel isn't going to write itself, and I've got to start somewhere so mainly, I'm trying to get all the ideas in my head about my novel down in writing and start developing the characters.

For me, a good book is always about character development and rich detail. It's why I enjoy reading Jhumpa Lahiri so much. Her books and short stories are not about dramatic plot or hyperbolic character. They are about regular people doing regular things but her ability to paint a vivid picture in your mind about their lives - this is what sucks you in, makes you see life through the eyes of her characters. It's good writing, plain and simple.

The key to truly good writing, in my opinion, is the author's ability to make the character so real, so tangible that the reader starts seeing the world through the eyes of the character or the narrator. It's about voice.

The lives of the characters in The Help could not be more different from my own life. What do I have in common with black housemaids or their white bosses in Mississippi during the civil rights era? Nothing, and yet every time I pick up the book, I am instantly transported to their world.

And God willing, I'd like to give believable, compassionate and complex voices to the characters I've imagined in my head, most of whom are inspired by people I've met in real life. I just wish my words wouldn't sound so chick-lit-y, as if all my characters have contracted some linguistic disease where they are stuck sounding like...me.