The courage to be me

There are some days when I read reviews of other writers' books and want to curl up and die.  The reviewers call the stories funny, complex, richly-drawn narratives.  They're supposed to make us re-think the way we see life.

Gulp!  Should I just give up writing now?  Somehow, I don't think my books would get that sort of reaction from those critics.  But hang on a minute.  What do their words really mean?

Funny is different from one person to the next.  Personally, I can't stand in-your-face stand-up comedy.  To me it's not funny.  Comedians are always trying too hard, in my opinion.  The things that make me laugh are often unexpected visual gags of some kind.  And humour in my writing is far more likely to be a sly sideways swipe at something through an off-hand comment or casual observation of a situation.

Richly-drawn narrative.  Hmm.  What does that mean, exactly?  Does it mean lots of viewpoints and a twisty plot?  So much navel-gazing that even the character gets bored and goes to sleep?  I can't do that either.  I like my stories to have some sense of something external happening, something to keep the story moving.

What this boils down to is that I need to ignore the reviews and have the courage to be me.  I have to concentrate on finding and honing my own voice.  I've written oven twenty novels now and I think I've found out who I am as a writer.  I'm a simple storyteller telling a straightforward tale.  And if that means my characters don't time-travel through six periods in non-chronological order, then so be it.

I'm doing what every writer eventually has to do.  I'm claiming the courage to be me, to tell my story my way.