Don’t lose your writers voice!

Losing your writers voice can be the worst thing. When you don’t have a voice you no longer have a style of writing.

My first novel helped me to see how important my writer’s voice was. I finished the novel within a year and submitted it to a large publication. They told me it wasn’t steamy enough for them, and that I should add in a bedroom scene.

It was a romance novel so I understood steamy but I left out any explicit sex scenes because I just didn’t feel comfortable writing them. They weren’t my style of writing. I could amp up the steamy without having a bedroom scene.

However, thinking that by doing what they suggested I would get my book published I added in the scene.

I hated writing the scene and I hated that it was in my book. I felt guilty for having conformed to what everyone else was doing. But I resubmitted it anyway and several weeks later got an email telling me that it wasn’t what they were looking for. Historical western romances weren’t selling well at the time.

Now I felt horrible. I had just rewritten a whole section of my book to get it published and I got rejected. It wasn’t the rejection that made me feel bad it was fact I had given in and changed my book.

I got so disgusted with myself I shelved the book for almost a whole year. During that time I stopped writing.

My husband convinced me I should self-publish the book. He was proud I had finished the book and even though he had…