NUANCE

I am grateful I choose to continually learn from the Masters. Writing is a solitary art, no doubt about it! The hours spent alone within the four walls of my mind can be illuminating, shocking, devastating and downright self-destructive. (let's hope I don't take the last one too far!) The dictionary states the definition of NUANCE as: a subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, or sound.  To me, nuance is that pulse, that beat, that slice out of REAL life that takes the reader literally off the page and slaps them smack into another reality, allowing them to suspend belief enough that they are actually reading words, sentences, paragraphs on a page, but so very far away for the written page. I love that feeling, that aha moment! I'm there, right there, with that character, breathing the air, smelling the Chinese take out, eating the leftover turkey from Thanksgiving, burying the dead. And, in order to do this there has got to be the GIFT, a GIFT of nuance! And, as readers you know the difference when you're reading masters versus amateurs... and unfortunately, I put myself into the latter category more times than not. BUT, I am learning. I am passionate, I am driven and I understand the process. The question is... do I have that edge? That intelligence, bordering on genius where every second. every character, every detail is turned up to that pitch. I hope so... nuance!
Keep writing... keep creating!
Some (a few... since I read voraciously everybody) writers who I feel have that GIFT!
Susanna Moore
Bret Easton Ellis
Jonathan Franzen
Bradford Morrow
Stephen King
Adam Ross
Donald Ray Pollock
Like I said... a few!