As I said in the last post: when it comes to the narrator’s voice I have a fear of it.

On the surface this fear was founded on show don’t tell and info dumping. In hindsight, there’s more to it and it’s about me personally.

I’ve always had a fear of giving too much away about myself. This led to problems with parents and my wife.

I didn’t want to let a side of me out. We are the narrator of our lives and if we don’t control the narrative others will through lies.

I had this fear of people not understanding who I was, what I wanted out of life or whether I was the type of person who would do horrible things. Then I realized, people will judge me no matter what I say.

When it came to narrating a story, I began to look at it similarly.

If I control the narrative of my life and people think what they want anyway, why should I care what they say? Why should the narrator in my novels and short stories be any different?

I shouldn’t!

Before, I would write a story worried about what someone thought about it. Now, after dealing with the narrator issues, I understood I can’t make someone like what I wrote so I should enjoy the process more.

I began to write better.

I put in better detail and stopped caring whether what someone would think about it.

My writing flourished and I started a new novel in the beginning of December 2018. I destroyed my word count because the fear I had vanished.

How has your writing flourished in the past year? What did you do different to improve? Tell me in the comments.