Justin Michael Greenway

My favorite anecdote about being a writer asserts that it is the only profession in which one can be gazing out a window and honestly claim to be working. It is certainly true for me. There is rarely a moment when my mind is not pondering an idea for one of my thirteen (and counting) stories in development. Although I have set my efforts on marketing my published novel, Ravenword and The House of the Red Death, I cannot keep my imagination from playing with the others. Thus, each remains a work in progress and refuses to remain on the shelf. As far as the projects themselves, just as each fall into different genres, the 'life' of each story determines the narrative voice the work is written in. I have chosen this path, with some criticism, for reasons both practical and artistic.

The pragmatic reason is steeped in my experience reading works by particular authors where the stories of each novel are independent of each other but the narrative voice doesn't change. This has left me bored and reluctant to read their new releases. While many argue that the consistency of an author's narrative voice is vital, I reserve the opinion that this is only true in a book series. In addition, this propensity for monotony fosters a dangerous propensity to follow a formula rather than allowing the stories to unfold organically.

Artistically, allowing the story to create its own narrative voice amplifies the integrity of the work. Just as the personalities of characters begin to develop seemingly independent of the writer, the same can be true for the "personality" of a story. The result is a richness unique to that story and a freshness to each new project.

Another tactic I employ, much to ire of some, is an omniscient point of view. My purpose for this approach is due to how audiences have been conditioned by entertainment. Our society is increasingly visual and in movies we rarely watch a story from the point of view of only one character. I think literature must evolve to do the same, without sacrificing the depth and texture visual media cannot provide. This is the same reason I employ a rapid pace in scene progression. If I am bored with a scene, my readers be will too.

My final point regarding my work is that each makes a statement. This was brought home to me as a teenager when reading Chaim Potok's "My Name Is Asher Lev". Asher's mentor tells him "if you do not make a statement with your art, then you are nothing more than a prostitute." That statement impacted me greatly and became part of my writing philosophy. However, nothing in my work is meant to be inflammatory. I write in hopes of entertaining and inspiring, just as my favorite authors have entertained and inspired me.

My big challenge currently is getting my platform up and running. Hopefully, I’ll have my author’s website finished soon, so satay tuned!