Honestly, I never thought about it until I started writing a blog. For as much as we writers have in common, we each bring something different and totally unique to the table. That’s right we’re all special! (God bless us, everyone!)
It’s important to play to your strengths when you write. Use your natural abilities. For instance, I have a peculiar brand of snark and quirkiness that I’ve been told makes me somewhat interesting. (Wow….do I smell a thinly veiled insult or compliment?)
Secondly, I’ve lived long enough to experience the sweetness and beauty that life has to offer, but more than that, I’ve been lucky enough to have faced my fair share of setbacks and misfortunes. (Lucky to have troubles? Is she insane? Stay with me people, I promise I haven’t passed quirky and gone straight to stark raving mad.)
There are great advantages to tackling the challenges that life has to offer. The strength, patience, determination, perspective and wisdom that I possess and enjoy now were born from misery. Happiness didn’t teach me those things, hardships did. Learning to understand the inestimable value of emotional pain is essential to the writer who strives to be excellent and it can’t be achieved without some degree of experience. (So in your face trials and tribulations! Who’s got the last laugh now?)
My profession as a registered nurse offered me another remarkable benefit. It was in the service of caring for others that I gained extraordinary insight into human nature and behavior. To this day that knowledge is indispensable when I’m breathing life into the characters of my stories. (Sorry, no snappy comment to be had on this paragraph. I’m never flip about my nursing career.)
Finally, I’ve honed my writing skills and I’m passionate about creating literature which not only entertains but inspires young people to read and to think! I don’t mind hard work, honest critiques, or any necessary revisions that make a manuscript go from good to exceptional. (However, in my perfect world, I’d be getting paid to do all these things too.)
Now, I patiently await a kiss from destiny as I search for the perfect agent. (And I pray the afore mentioned kiss is planted squarely on the cheek of my face and not the cheek of my butt!)
What sets you apart from other writers?
Yes, the strengths born from misery cannot be underestimated. Care to look at my page, in need of updating as it is? (But you might not ever have realized that if I’d not said.)
Thanks for the follow on twitter, btw. That’s what’s allowed me to meet the lovely, spunky Princess Olivia. Now my alter ego, whose initials are HAK, is naughty. “Cheeky” and “nervy” too–maybe the same difference. She doesn’t come out nearly enough; when she does she creates the dumbest situations to laugh at. A wee bit off the wall and over the moon she is, bold and a lot of fun. 🙂
I think that HAK would get along well with Princess Olivia!
I love your “quirkiness”! and I love your writing.
Awww…thanks so much Janie!