To Find Your Voice, Go Back to Your Roots

By Tina Ann Forkner

          

“Roots are not in landscape or a country, or a people, they are in you.” – Isabel Allende

Some of the best stories in literature have been born out of locations that the authors not only researched, but also spent a great deal of time in. When an author spends a lot of time in one geographic location, everything about the landscape and culture becomes part of the author. It becomes part of their voice. It is as if, instead of the author’s roots going deep into the area, that area’s roots go deep into the author.

As an example, my first two novels were set in the California wine country. I live in Wyoming, but prior to moving there, I attended college in Sacramento where I lived for five years, spending every other weekend in the Sonoma Valley. After spending so much time immersed in the area’s culture, it was second nature to set my novels there. So you might be thinking that I must have found my voice in writing about California, but when it was time to write my third novel, my voice kept turning into a rural country girl. I recognized her. She was from my home town

I grew up in the northeastern corner of Oklahoma, just a few miles from both Arkansas and Missouri. I have family scattered all around that three state area and for me, the landscape, the culture, the simple way of southern living all draw me back to visit year after year. Summers filled with creeks, iced tea, strawberry short cake, cool lemon meringue pie, and blissfully long days of climbing trees and picking wildflowers are the things I talk about most to my children. I can’t even tell you about it here without waxing sentimental, but after I got California off my mind, I decided it was time to write about the place that kept calling me home.

When I started writing my latest novel, Waking Up Joy, which is set in northeastern Oklahoma, it was as if the story just flowed out of my fingertips. Not that it was easy, because writing never is, but when it came to inspiration, it was right there. I only had to reach into a well of experiences that were easy to shape into fiction. 

When I finished Waking Up Joy, a writing friend asked me how I came up with that place. I couldn’t really explain it to her. It was just inside of me, although the part about the medieval charms concealed in an Inglenook chimney came from something I heard about while living in England. So you see? That’s just another example of how where you’ve spent time gets inside of you, and eventually into your stories. That’s how you find your voice.

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Tina Ann Forkner is a Women’s Fiction writer and the author of Waking Up Joy, releases, today. She is also the author of Rose House and Ruby Among Us. While she was born and raised in Oklahoma, lived in England, and attended college in California, Tina makes her home in Cheyenne, Wyoming with her husband, three teenagers, and two spoiled dogs. Learn more about her and her books at www.tinaannforkner.com

            

All that Glitters in the Publishing World…

By Tina Ann Forkner

There is nothing like getting published to make an author doubt themselves. For me, it was the moment after I signed the contract with my publisher up until—well, now.  The point is, the doubts that most writers have never fully go away, even after publication, and it can stop a writer in her tracks. So what keeps a writer from giving up? The answer, unfortunately, is complex and many writers do give up.

Where does this knowledge that published authors still lose confidence leave you if you’re still unpublished? You probably aren’t inspired to hear that it only gets harder. Sure, I can tell you the steps that worked for me and how I’m having a great time at book signings, but less glamorous are the hours I’ve sat in front of my computer, the reviews that made me want to go back to doing things like flipping burgers, and about how I still get rejected even after getting published.

I realize this isn’t great news, but don’t put your pen down yet. There is something that you, and I, need in order to write better and be more prolific, but it’s not some sort of supreme wisdom reserved only for authors who top the bestseller lists. It’s perseverance. What does perseverance mean when it comes to writing?

Author Katrina Monroe said, “Writing is like giving yourself really hard homework, every day, for the rest of your life. You want glamorous? Throw glitter at the computer screen.” That’s the best definition of perseverance when it comes to writing that I’ve ever heard. Unfortunately perseverance has lots of enemies. It’s easier to pull weeds in your garden, clean the toilet, or better yet, read a book that someone else already wrote than to write your own book, but doing those things are the coward’s way out. (Feel free to share this point with your family when you need help with chores.)

This is the part of the article where I’m supposed to give you the secret to persevering, but it’s not that simple. I can’t make you sit down at your computer screen, put your fingers on the keyboard, and type without stopping for the next hour, every day, every week, every month for however long it takes you to finish your story. Only you can do that. The bad news is that it’s really hard to do. You know that and I know that, because we are writers. Nobody else is going to understand, therefore nobody else is going to make you do it. You have to do it all by yourself. The good news is, you have it in you to do it.

So do it. Write. And then keep going until you have a bunch of words that eventually, if you don’t give up and if you love them enough, will become a book.

The only secret to persevering as a writer, is to write. Start today, and then get up tomorrow and do it again. 

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Tina Ann Forkner is a substitute teacher who currently lives in Wyoming with her husband and three children. She loves to garden and spend time outdoors with her family, she is presently knitting a scarf, and has been active volunteering on her library foundation’s board of directors. Tina’s novels, Ruby Among Us and Rose House are published by Waterbrook/Random House.

Learn more at www.tinaannforkner.come

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