Oh boy,
Do I dig this music.
Welcome to Found Voices.
I'm Carolyn Zeal.
Welcome to a mini episode,
Episode 11,
Strengthen Your Core.
You have not stumbled into a health and fitness podcast,
I promise.
I'm here to share with you a little tidbit about writing today.
My intention is to help you become the best writer you can be.
When you strengthen your core,
It helps with injury prevention,
Posture,
Stability and balance,
Sports performance,
Workout performance,
And flexibility.
In writing,
It affects other areas of your writing as well.
If you don't have a quote strong core in your writing,
Your piece will fall flat.
It'll fall short.
It might not hold up under pressure,
Under question.
I just thought of,
You know,
It's one of those scenes in a procedural and they have the light shining down on you.
How strong is your core?
How strong is your writing?
Okay,
That's ridiculous.
I digress.
I'm coming back.
When you have a strong core in writing,
That means that you can layer anything upon it.
You can break rules when you have a strong core in writing.
You can push the envelope,
Push the boundaries of what is to be expected.
If you listened to my last episode on risk,
I spoke about the idea of breaking rules,
Of writing not for the judges but for the gods.
But you can't do that without a strong core.
You can't move forward in your writing without a strong core.
So how do you strengthen your core in writing?
With your deep voice and by writing like you talk.
The writing must ring true.
Your voice is the invisible motor,
As I believe Jack Gilbert said,
That drives the piece.
It drives the writing.
When Hemingway wrote or said,
Just write one true sentence,
What he meant was not fact or fiction,
But make it real.
The writing must ring true.
How you structure your sentence matters.
How you use language matters.
The writing must ring true.
And it is that true,
Deep voice,
That deep connected voice and writing like you talk that will compel your reader to read.
And that is the core of your work.
If you sit down without strengthening your core,
Without honing your own voice,
Without connected deep writing,
And you try to write like a writer,
Write writerly,
You'll miss the mark.
You can't build without a strong foundation.
And writing like you talk,
Connecting to your deep voice,
Is the foundation of your work.
In Jack Rape's method writing,
The second tool I teach is how to massage a transformation line.
It answers the questions,
What's the story of your life?
What is the truth of who you are?
Whether it's true or not,
Whether it happened or didn't,
Now or in the past,
Or in the future,
When you massage your transformation line and go deep,
Your reader will connect to the narrator,
To the voice,
To the character driving what you're writing.
They will see themselves in your work,
And that will compel them to continue reading.
And that's the power of the deep voice.
In level two of Jack Rape's method writing,
I teach the four voices.
So you have your voice,
And then you have four other voices,
Which I talk about in Courage,
Episode 9,
Part 1,
Courage,
Risk,
And Repeat.
However,
Without a strong core,
Without a strong foundation,
You can't use these voices to their full potential.
And so we start at the basics.
I like to say I teach the footwork of writing.
You know how in boxing,
You just don't walk into the ring and then throw a punch.
The punch comes from your feet.
It starts there and you wind up.
You have to learn the footwork before you learn how to box,
Before you can punch.
And I teach the footwork of writing.
And the first steps in that footwork to strengthen your core as a writer boxer are writing like you talk and the deep voice.
If you have any questions,
Reach out to me.
I'll create another podcast that answers them.
In the meantime,
Thanks for listening to this short and sweet writing tidbit.
Thank you,
And Ripe On.
