You’re probably the go-to writer for everyone you know. Aren’t you?

If someone needs a resume cover letter, a complaint letter, a business letter, an admissions letter, they come to you.

But here’s the catch—each type of letter requires a different voice and tone. After all, the letter is supposed to be coming from our friend. We know what they sound like: their own, unique voice.

The important business email for your friend? The employee’s coworkers are expecting business-language speak and a brusque, professional, confident attitude. You’re using silly, business words and phrases like “going forward,” “leverage,” “out of the box,” “big hitter,” etc. It should sound like your friend, being professional.

The complaint letter? A well-documented tale of woe with just a tinge of sarcasm or irritation. My favorite thing to do for friends who ask me to write their complaint letters is to take the corporation’s slogan off their website, transplant it to the top of the letter, and outline how the company failed to live up to it. Your friend’s voice, but frustrated.

A letter to the principal of your friend’s child’s school? Very much like a complaint letter, but scattered with insight into the friend’s child, casting the child in a sympathetic light. The tone is of concern for the child. Write these letters in a nurturing voice—your friend–the responsible, concerned parent who is partnering with the principal in an important role.

Sometimes I think as writers we over-think voice. It comes naturally to us—voice is that voice in our heads when we’re thinking or reading. We’ve changed in it the above examples because of the situation and because the letter is supposed to be coming from our friends, not us. Our friends don’t sound like us. We made the voice in the letter sound like them…with a problem.

But our books are from us—unless we’re ghostwriting. Our voices, telling the story, on paper.

Tonight I’m talking to my daughter’s Brownie troop about writing.

I usually talk to children and teens/preteens a quarter as much as I talk to adults.

This does make sense—I don’t write books for children, after all. But I do really like to encourage them to write. I remember how an advertising agent came by my 3rd grade class to talk about creative jobs. She brought in her own chalk and it was wildly colored stuff—nothing like what my teacher had. She was so excited about writing copy and inventing ad campaigns that her enthusiasm was contagious. I ended up taking an advertising course in college which helped me from time to time with the magazines I worked for.

I always remember her excitement when she spoke to my class and I try to reproduce it when I talk with children.

Things that are different about talking to children:

They pay closer attention than most adults.

They ask questions in the middle of your talk. You need to tell them at the very start that each person will have a chance to ask questions at the end.

You may need to remind them more than once that you’ll take questions at the end.

They are genuinely more creative than we are. This comes out in everything they do and say—whether they’re talking about their dreams, the monsters under their beds, or the fanciful but not-quite-true event they’re telling you about. I wasn’t prepared for it the first time I went in and the creativity was overwhelming—and exciting.

They need more graphics and physical examples than adults. Bring your book to hold up. Bring your WIPs—the messier the better. Bring any outlines you might have. Show the before and after.

A Few Tips:

Ask the teacher what they’re working on, writing-wise, when you’re preparing to talk. Most kids in elementary school will be working on non-fiction pieces until at least 4th grade.

Make sure that if you incorporate some teaching into your talk that it corresponds exactly with what the teacher is teaching. Don’t want to un-teach anything and get on the teacher’s bad side.

I write murder mysteries, but when I’m talking to small children, I write “detective stories.” When they ask what my book is about, I tell them it’s about a detective who figures out puzzles.

Middle schoolers, on the other hand, are more interested in any blood and gore—not that my books have any. But they’re definitely a different audience. I focus more on my research and the information I get from police, etc.

Handouts are helpful tools for the kids. I’ll put clip art on mine, and put three major points of my talk on the handout. Then I’ll have my book info for any curious parents who end up with the handout later at home.

And….it’s Thursday morning! If you like some zest in your bread, head over to Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen for a spicy corn muffin.

I’ve been an off and on follower of Fly Lady for years. I keep many of her general housekeeping principles each day (quick clean-up in the morning, devoting a particular day for different household tasks…including errands and bills, etc.) It helps me to have some sort of method for the madness—I am, after all, a grime-fighter. :)

One of my favorite things that the Fly Lady has instituted is Anti-Procrastination day. Anti-Procrastination days take place on Wednesday every week and we’re encouraged to tackle at least one thing that we’ve been putting off doing. This could be something like making a medical appointment, sweeping the front porch, replacing a light bulb, calling the plumber about the leaky sink, or sending in a claim form to the insurance company.

I think the concept is useful for writing, too. I definitely have writing-related tasks that I put off doing. How about you? Have you ordered those bookmarks? Postcards? Business cards? Have you put all your writing-related receipts in a separate envelope (I believe even those of us who call writing a hobby for the IRS can claim some deductions….it’s something to check into)? Have you brainstormed on a sheet of paper how to finish that difficult chapter? Was there a scene you need to go back and revise? Promotional phone calls to bookstores to make?

I have postcards I need to send out to libraries. And I’m going to tackle that chore today (just for 15 minutes.) I might be finishing up this chore next Wednesday, but at least I’ll feel better knowing I’ve made a start. And there’s also a picture I’ve been meaning to hang.

What have you been putting off doing? Can you find 15-30 minutes today to do it?

Like most people, I have random and vague memories from being very small.

I remember being on an airplane at age two and being offered a Coke. I was amazed that my mother let me have one because I wasn’t allowed to have soft drinks usually (I got rambunctious after sugar or caffeine.)

I also have a very vague recollection of a little girl with several hundred Barbie dolls in an elegant hotel lobby. My grandmother and great-grandmother were there, which was unusual because they lived in another state.

I couldn’t put these snippets into any kind of mental catalog or file them away in the appropriate place, because I’d been small and picked out the pieces that seemed important to me.

When I asked my mother about these events years later, she was able to put them in context for me. But to her, the highlights of the experiences were definitely not Coca Cola and Barbie dolls. They were the flight’s destination at Sea Island, Georgia and the event we were attending at the elegant hotel. Neither of which I remembered a bit of, could describe, or even cared about.

This concept of individual observations interests me in fiction. In a mystery, it’s easy to use—different witnesses to the same event could perceive the event very differently, just because each has his own concept of what’s important. You’d get different viewpoints, colored by each person’s priorities and experiences. The sleuth tries to piece together the truth by merging the stories—and sometimes completely discounting a person’s observations as being incorrect (maybe because they’re lying about what they saw or did).

The idea is interesting in biographies. What is the truth about a person? How do we arrive at the truth? There could be twenty different biographies on Princess Diana and they might well all be different—depending on whether the information about her was given by a friend or from someone who she was at odds with in the palace. Most of us are mixes of good and bad—but if you’re writing a biography, what is your motive? What are you trying to portray—the truth? Whatever sells? Or your own romanticized idea of the person you’re writing about? I read bios with a lot of interest and a hefty amount of skepticism.

Nonfiction books on events like Vietnam? I can only imagine the range of opinions that could influence the writing of such a book. But then, if you stick only to the facts and don’t include interviews or opinions, then your book might be less interesting. I think you’d have to apply journalism principles and try to get all sides of a story…unless, again, your motives were to show only a particular side of the event.

It’s interesting in general fiction when someone finds that the truth about a person is different from what everyone has told them is the truth. Glenda of Oz directs Dorothy to a wizard she describes as great and powerful. Everyone in Oz shares the same perception of the wizard—one which isn’t accurate at all. Here you have inaccurate perceptions, deliberately given by someone who wanted the truth about himself (that he wasn’t a great wizard at all) to stay hidden.

You might have a character who ordinarily is extremely trustworthy; a person your protagonist frequently goes to for an opinion. But maybe this rock-solid individual isn’t a good person to talk to when it comes to a particular problem. Maybe their past experiences have warped them in some way to make their judgment unreliable.

We all have our own ideas on people and events, colored by our backgrounds and interests. I love seeing our differences played out in books. And working them into my own.

It was a big weekend for me, promotion-wise. Saturday I spoke at a writers’ workshop at the Gaston County Library in Gastonia, NC. There were around 75 people there, which is a good-sized group. Yesterday I spoke with my promotional group, The Carolina Conspiracy, at the Waldenbooks at the Carolina Mall in Concord, NC. It went well, too ( but I felt more distracted since my eight year old daughter was with me.)

One thing I picked up on from both workshops was the interest that writers in the audience had in handling rejection. Lynette Hall Hampton spoke on the topic and Joyce Lavene said a few words, as well. People actually spoke out in the middle of the workshop and thanked them for their encouragement.

Submitting material to agents and editors is very difficult.

It feels terrible to get rejected.

We all get rejected.

Lynette talked about the huge number of rejections that she’s gotten in a long career of writing for periodicals and writing books.

Joyce (who has co-authored nearly 60 books with her husband for Berkley Prime Crime, Midnight Ink, Avalon, and others) spoke about planning for rejection. To actually expect the rejections in advance and what your plan for the rejection letters would be: a bonfire, a bathroom papered with them (both have been done by writers she knows), or a treat you give yourself the day you get a bad email or letter.

I have a whole drawer of rejections. I don’t know why I keep them. But they’re there. I was actually rejected by my current agent before. And by many other agents and publishers. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t been rejected.

Joyce mentioned a great point: remember the rejection is a business decision. It’s nothing personal. It might be the right project, but at the wrong time. Continue submitting.

I got rejections.

Things that helped me deal with them:

Feeling I was cheating a little bit. I never followed the ‘no simultaneous submissions’ rule. But I made sure that everyone who did get a query letter from me was well-targeted and researched. I made sure they published the kind of book I wrote: both the subject matter and word count. I went to the bookstore and found books that were similar to mine and got the publisher’s name and the author’s agent and editor’s name (nearly always included in the grateful author’s acknowledgements.) For some reason, this tiny little rebellion made me feel more in control.

Finding publishers that didn’t require I have an agent. Read: smaller national publishers. This could be Bleak House, Poisoned Pen, Midnight Ink, Avalon. They’re big enough if you’re starting out. They’ll put you in the bookstores. Your print run might be smaller, but you’ll sell-through your advance quicker. I was not finding it easy to get an agent, so I decided to go right to the source. And this worked for me. (Now I do have an agent…a must when dealing with a big publisher like Berkley Prime Crime/Penguin Books.)

Working on different projects. I decided it wasn’t wise to write a sequel for a book that hadn’t been accepted by a publisher. So I started writing something completely different, to distract me.

Finally…I got an acceptance email. And another acceptance email.

Keep at it. Don’t get discouraged. Know the rules and follow them…to a point. Make your submissions well-targeted and well-written.

Expect rejections.

And keep on writing.