Your Voice is Like a Recipe

Your Voice is Like a Recipe The hardest thing for me to describe to a new writer is voice.   At a recent conference, during an informal gathering, a new writer asked how to identify voice. I gave her authors’ names and showed her how they had distinct voices. She recognized theirs, but she was still confused how to identify her own. Then I read a blog post about developing your own recipes, and how good cooks start off reading other recipes, then altering them as they deem necessary. Soon they have original dishes, after trial and error, insertions and deletions, embellishing and withdrawing. The same goes for writing. Recently, I heard a new writer say she didn’t have time to read very much. I hate that, because reading other work is the best teaching tool out there. Not conferences, not degrees, not how-to books, not that those don’t help. However, since the beginning of time, it’s been proven that the best way to learn anything is I’ve heard some writers say they are afraid they will copy who they read. Nah. Ain’t gonna happen. You are not as good as they are, and trust me, you will not pull it off like they do. They have their voice. They know what they’re doing. You may still be searching. I believe that reading the masters (i.e., successful authors who write in the genre you write) teaches you what works. You may even try writing like them. One author, then another author, then yet another. They are in your head as you fight a chapter – the action, the character development, the plot formulation. You study one   author for one aspect, then grab another for yet a different facet. Go ahead and copy them. You’re going to edit the book anyway.   Because a funny thing happens between Chapter One and Chapter Thirty. Your writing grows. You start winging it several chapters into the story. You aren’t so quick to copy, and get quicker at making up your own stuff. You reach Chapter Thirty and then†¦you go back and read the first few chapters. Wow. You write better than what you put in the opening chapters, and you learned it as you fought your way to the final chapters. That’s when you start with Chapter One and edit away, using the new voice that seems to ooze out here and there. You edit all the way through the book. Then you go back and look at Chapters One through Ten or so again. Dang it! You discover your voice grew again! You write better in the end than you did in the beginning of the story. So†¦you edit the book again. You do this over and over and over. Twenty times or more, if necessary. As long as you feel your ending sounds better than the beginning, you rewrite, until your voice is uniform  throughout. A handful of you will think your book is good after the second draft, and you would be wrong. All those edits are necessary to build that elusive voice. Aren’t sure you have your voice defined yet?   Keep reading the masters, copying the masters, writing beginning to end, and rewriting over and over. So, what does this have to do with a recipe? When you first make a dish, you use a recipe perfected

Biography of Bartolomé de Las Casas, Spanish Colonist

Biography of Bartolomà © de Las Casas, Spanish Colonist Bartolomà © de Las Casas (c. 1484–July 18, 1566) was a Spanish Dominican friar who became famous for his defense of the rights of the native people of the Americas. His brave stand against the horrors of the conquest and the colonization of the New World earned him the title â€Å"Defender of the Native Americans. Las Casas efforts led to legal reforms and early debates about the idea of human rights. Fast Facts: Bartolomà © de Las Casas Known For: Las Casas was a Spanish colonist and friar who advocated for better treatment of Native Americans.Born: c. 1484 in Seville, SpainDied: July 18, 1566 in Madrid, SpainPublished Works: A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Apologetic History of the Indies, History of the Indies Early Life Bartolomà © de Las Casas was born about 1484 in Seville, Spain. His father was a merchant and was acquainted with the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus. Young Bartolomà ©, then about 9 years old, was in Seville when Columbus returned from his first voyage in 1493; he might have met members of the Taà ­no tribe that Columbus brought back with him from the Americas. Bartolomà ©Ã¢â‚¬â„¢s father and uncle sailed with Columbus on his second voyage. The family became quite wealthy and had holdings on Hispaniola, an island in the Caribbean. The connection between the two families was strong: Bartolomà ©s father eventually interceded with the pope on the matter of securing certain rights on behalf of Columbus’s son Diego, and Bartolomà © de Las Casas himself edited Columbus’s travel journals. Las Casas eventually decided that he wanted to become a priest, and his father’s new wealth allowed him to attend the best schools of the era: the University of Salamanca and the University of Valladolid. Las Casas studied canon law  and eventually earned two degrees. He excelled in his studies, particularly Latin, and his strong academic background served him well in the years to come. First Trip to the Americas In 1502, Las Casas finally went to see the family holdings on Hispaniola. By then, the natives of the island had been mostly subdued, and the city of Santo Domingo was being used as a resupply point for Spanish incursions in the Caribbean. The young man accompanied the governor on two different military missions aimed at pacifying those natives who remained on the island. On one of these trips, Las Casas witnessed a massacre of poorly armed natives, a scene he would never forget. He traveled around the island a great deal and was able to see the deplorable conditions in which the natives lived. The Colonial Enterprise and Mortal Sin Over the next few years, Las Casas traveled to Spain and back several times, finishing his studies and learning more about the sad situation of the natives. By 1514, he decided that he could no longer be personally involved in the exploitation of the natives and renounced his family holdings on Hispaniola. He became convinced that the enslavement and slaughter of the native population was not only a crime but also a mortal sin as defined by the Catholic Church. It was this iron-clad conviction that would eventually make him such a staunch advocate for fair treatment of the natives. First Experiments Las Casas convinced Spanish authorities to allow him to try to save the few remaining Caribbean natives by taking them out of slavery and placing them in free towns, but the death of Spains King Ferdinand in 1516 and the resulting chaos over his successor caused these reforms to be delayed. Las Casas also asked for and received a section of the Venezuelan mainland for an experiment. He believed he could pacify the natives with religion rather than weapons. Unfortunately, the region that was selected had been heavily raided by slave traders, and the natives’ hostility to the Europeans was too intense to overcome. The Verapaz Experiment In 1537, Las Casas wanted to try again to demonstrate that natives could be controlled peacefully and that violence and conquest were unnecessary. He was able to persuade the crown to allow him to send missionaries to a region in north-central Guatemala where the natives had proved particularly fierce. His experiment worked, and the natives were peacefully brought under Spanish control. The experiment was called Verapaz, or â€Å"true peace,† and the region still bears the name. Unfortunately, once the region was brought under control, colonists took the lands and enslaved the natives, undoing almost all of Las Casas’ work. Death Later in life, Las Casas became a prolific writer, traveled frequently between the New World and Spain, and made allies and enemies in all corners of the Spanish Empire. His History of the Indies- a frank account of Spanish colonialism and the subjugation of the natives- was completed in 1561. Las Casas spent his final years living at the College of San Gregorio in Valladolid, Spain. He died on July 18, 1566. Legacy Las Casas’ early years were marked by his struggle to come to terms with the horrors he had seen and his understanding of how God could allow this kind of suffering among the Native Americans. Many of his contemporaries believed that God had delivered the New World to Spain as a reward of sorts to encourage the Spanish to continue to wage war upon heresy and idolatry as defined by the Roman Catholic Church. Las Casas agreed that God had led Spain to the New World, but he saw a different reason for it: He believed it was a test. God was testing the loyal Catholic nation of Spain to see if it could be just and merciful, and in Las Casas’ opinion, the country failed God’s test miserably. It is well known that Las Casas fought for justice and freedom for the New World natives, but it is frequently overlooked that his love for his countrymen was just as powerful. When he freed the natives working on the Las Casas family holdings in Hispaniola, he did it as much for the sake of his soul and those of his family members as he did for the natives themselves. Though widely disparaged in the years after his death for his critiques of colonialism, Las Casas is now seen as a significant early reformer whose work helped pave the way for the liberation theology movement of the 20th century. Sources Casas, Bartolomà © de las, and Francis Sullivan. Indian Freedom: the Cause of Bartolomà © De Las Casas, 1484-1566: A Reader. Sheed Ward, 1995.Casas, Bartolomà © de las. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. Penguin Classics, 2004.Nabokov, Peter. â€Å"Indians, Slaves, and Mass Murder: The  Hidden History.† The New York Review of Books, 24 Nov. 2016.