The #1 reason writers lose their voice 🎤
Today's guest is author Sarah Bruni
Do you know what your story truly is about?
When you’re starting a new project, it’s easy to think possibility means leaving everything wide open. But sometimes the most generative thing you can do is define what your story isn’t.
Who are you writing for, truly? What conversation do you want to enter? What are you definitively not writing?
Protect your vision before you let other voices in.
The longer you sit with your intentions — and really interrogate them — the harder it becomes for outside feedback to pull your story off course.
Because once readers, editors, and critique partners weigh in, you need to continue to be able to hear your own voice. And the strongest work always comes from knowing exactly what you’re trying to say first.
In today’s interview, author Sarah Bruni shares the unusual writing exercise that opens up creative possibility, why she holds onto manuscripts before sharing them, and the underrated practice that brings her the most joy as a writer.
OUR SPECIAL GUEST TODAY IS…
Photo credit: Michelle Kaffko / Organic Headshots
Sarah Bruni
Author
New novel, MASS MOTHERING, available now!
What is the most memorable writing tip or technique that you have heard, and how did it influence your process?
One of my teachers, the writer Yuri Herrera, offered the advice when starting a new story to begin by making a list of the words you will not use in it. I found this advice to be tremendously useful, allowing me to create more space and possibility while beginning to imagine the terms of a fictional world.
Working this way, you can write without getting distracted by specific terms and any weight they may carry with them—whether they may be sensational, geographical, political, or otherwise—from the story you’re trying to tell.
What do you do to stay true to yourself in your writing?
I reread what’s on paper. I reread the texts that were on my mind while writing, my journals, my notes of my intentions for a piece of work. I try to keep interrogating those intentions at every juncture as I go, because once you have more voices in the room encouraging different edits or ideas, it can become increasingly difficult not get swayed by them.
I also tend to hold onto projects for a long time before sharing them with outside readers, until I know what they are and are not, what I’m willing to budge on and what is not negotiable for me as an artist.
When life gets busy, how do you protect your time to write?
I don’t. I don’t think it’s realistic for most writers to expect for it to be a regular practice at every stage of life. When I was teaching high school fulltime, I didn’t write for years. When I first became a parent, I barely got sentences down.
For me to get writing done, it’s often been the case that I save up money and hoard free time to be able to carve out the years where I can afford to dedicate myself to the practice of it. But I also think that living in the world and doing other things informs the work, that if you’re living with curiosity and intention, part of the writing is already happening in the moments when you’re not putting pen to paper.
Are you querying this year?
Preorder my book written with the creator of QueryTracker!
What’s one thing you do (creatively, mentally, or physically) that helps you stay in it when writing gets hard?
Take breaks. I read, take walks, play the guitar (badly) and sing along, dance in my kitchen, play with my kids. I don’t really believe in forcing the writing forward. I never feel like I’m in a rush to move a project until the writing feels good again. I believe when you’re bored and just going through the motions, the prose reads that way.
More often than not, I get ideas for how a piece of writing will evolve while engaging in an activity that has nothing to do with writing.
Ready for feedback that takes your story to the next level?
“I have greatly benefitted from my collaboration with Alyssa; I would not be where I am today without her! Her developmental ideas and vision for my novel taught me so much and helped to elevate my work in highly effective ways. Her editorial fingerprint is evident in the final result—a novel on bookshelves nationwide.”
—Jill Beissel, author of Glitter and Gold
What part of the writing process brings you the most joy?
Reading aloud, particularly at the juncture when a project is already in motion but there is still a lot of possibility for the direction it could take. I love to read aloud as I write, to hear dialogue, to feel the words in my mouth, when nothing on the page feels firm or finalized. When it still feels like it’s mine alone and it could go anywhere. It feels like whispering a secret, like taking a drug—it really never gets any better than this moment for me.
ICYMI…this week on YouTube, I share 5 tricks for making readers love your WORST character — maybe even more than your protagonist.
The exercise of listing the words you won't use fascinated me because it feels like creativity through subtraction instead of addition. I also appreciated the reminder that knowing what a piece isn't can be just as important as knowing what it is. That's advice that seems to apply far beyond fiction.