Talking in colour

Every writer needs a trusted voice, a sound-checker, someone to tell you what the others won’t or can’t. Because for every line, paragraph, page or verse you thread together, for all the editing, amending, rephrasing and yet more editing you put yourself through, the earworms never stop ... “Hmm, are you sure about that? Is this better?  What do you think? Is it good enough? Am I good enough?” The doubts are always there, poised to derail you, shift your focus and throw you off your path.

Now if you happen to have a trusted literary agent fighting your corner, seasoned, objective, professional, successful, someone whose opinion you know will be honest, brutally so if necessary, articulate and effective, well, lucky you. But for those of us who don’t (yet!) have that luxury, I’m seriously considering hiring out my son and his literary services...

I spent days recently working on a poem. I struggled, really struggled with it. I was testing my style, my approach, my tone, pushing myself to create a piece that had begun as an experiment and was stretching me and my literary form. I was out of my comfort zone. But I persevered, and gradually, as I developed the piece and found my voice, it began to flow and I felt more natural, more comfortable with my rhythm and metre and language. Finally, feeling it was almost ready for public consumption, I asked my sound-checker son to hear me out...  

“Well, yeah, it’s ok mum. I mean it’s good and I really like it actually but...  well, the thing is, if I’m honest, I think you’re talking in grey and you should be talking in colour.”

So there you have it. It’s very simple. Don’t talk in grey; talk in colour...

So now, whatever it is I’m working on, a poem, article, report, press release, forget those earworms; I just ask myself the six million dollar question: ‘am I talking in grey or in colour?’ 

And no, I’m not posting the poem here (just yet). There’s some colour I need to talk to first...