The Voice of Your Story is Your Reader

I feed off of your writing. I'm not stealing it, really, I'm just inspired by it. I have been enjoying some time off work recently and have had a little too much time immersing myself in the stories of others instead of working on my own story. There is a head game that occurs every single day to distract me from my own writing work, but this past week, those distractions have been others' stories.

I never used to believe that my situation was relevant to others. I believed that my story was mine alone and that no other would come close to it. In the past few years, however, that has changed as I have read others' accounts of loss, love, destroyed dreams. There is a similar undertone and theme to all of these stories that inspire me to capture my own.

While I know that some phenomenal books were birthed in the solitary confinement of one's own mind and place, I also know it is through experiences with others that other fantastic books were conceived. Our stories cannot develop or thrive without connecting them with other tales.

A writer's work not only has to be good enough for a publisher, but it has to be great enough for the readers it wants to capture. It is not about one person saying this is a worthy story, but about many affirming that this story needs retold to an audience.

As I work on my own memoir, I often battle the fear and question of "Who will want to read this?" I question if the story is worthy beyond my memories of it. What will another person garner from reading this? My friends tell me to write it despite who reads it, but ultimately, I want this story to be passed on because it was written well enough to capture a reader's own questions in life.

When you write, keep in mind that the story you tell is not only your voice, but the interior voice of your reader. How will the reader say that sentence in their head? What inflection comes across to someone who is walking a different journey than yourself? Are you portraying one message or multiple? While I know my story is mine alone to tell, it is my reader who will determine if it is worth telling to others.

Originally published through Whole Story Media Group