How Do You Know When You've Found Your Voice?

There’s a lot about writing that seems almost mystical – to people who don’t write, and even to those of us breathing in this damn, frustrating, lovely, mind-sucking, hole of death what we call writing.

One of the things you hear most often is VOICE. Big sparkly letters here, because that’s the onus us writing folk put on voice. It’s kind of like literary fiction – no one can tell you how to do it, but we sure the fuck know it when we see it. And then we get even more confusing about it – insisting that an author not only capture his or her own distinctive voice, but also capture each character’s voice. And the character’s voice has to be separate from the writer’s voice… and each character has to have their own voice so that you don’t have cardboard bullshit characters… oh, and don’t use any petty trickery or overused catch-phrases so that your reader literally rolls their eyes and tosses your book in a moldy laundry pile rather than finish it. We talk non-stop about craft and technique and grammar. We beat other works about the head and ears for feats of stupidity or, worse, purple prose.

Can you hear my voice? I bet you can. I can. I know it’s there and I know what it sounds like and guess what – it’s grammatically flawed as all hell. It doesn’t follow any of the rules. Okay, it follows some of the rules, but mostly by accident. You get to a point where you know them backwards and forwards and have to toss them out the window to get comfortable in your skin and say what you have to say. Because the bottom line in voice is communication. That’s it – plain and simple.

That’s all this really is – saying something. Saying something important, life changing, immortal, embarrassing, consuming, eloquent, clever, or blatant… I like blatant, myself. It often has a dry wit all its own. That’s all we’re trying to do here, whether it’s through articles or blog posts or works of fiction. We’re saying something – and in order to communicate, if you’re really good at it, you need to make sure your audience gets it. If your audience is full of high brow fancy schmancy types… go get a thesaurus so they don’t feel slighted by your mundane language – and leave your fucking profanity at the door. If your audience is full of deep thinkers, be more concerned with the ideas than the way they’re couched – deep thinkers don’t care what it looks like to the outside world. They’re not in it to impress anyone else. They want the essence of a story or idea that will make their mind take off… say it in pig latin, if it’s brilliant, they’ll still go with you.

But what you’re saying seems beside the point when you’re talking about voice, right? It’s part of it, but I’ll get back to that. Voice is most often categorized as the flavor of the way you say things, kind of like an accent on the page. And yeah, I can hear New York or Southern Charm, or an Irish Brogue. But it’s not just that.

Remember when you were in high school? Remember when you wanted all the cool kids to like you, or when you started digging combat boots and dyed your hair and spoke in Violent Femmes lyrics? Remember when you stole little phrases from rock stars or friends that were just too fucking cool? Remember that kid, teetering on the curb, trying to get his bearings and up his courage to walk in the middle of the road, pretty as you fucking please? That kid. The one who wanted to be someone special, but didn’t know quite how to get there so he borrowed bits from here and there and adapted other bits that might have been his or maybe they were scrapped up from somewhere else… and he wore them like a mantle of independent thinking – just like everybody else.

Yeah, well if your voice is that – you’re doing it wrong.

The problem with that kid is he was playing at being someone other people might admire. He wasn’t there yet. His confidence was low and his braggadocio was borrowed. That’s not where your voice comes from. You can’t borrow someone else’s… scratch that, you can, actually… if you’ve got a really good ear for language (and if you’re a writer, we’ll assume that you do), you can, in fact, mimic another writer… another person… adopt it and wear it and put it out there… but you won’t have developed YOUR voice.

And they’ll tell you that no one can help you find your voice. There are no instructions to get there or develop it or bring it out. Which is probably true – every journey seems to be as different as every writer. A writer friend recently told me that he could tell that I turned a corner. That my writing voice was the strongest he’d ever seen it. That I was ready. And I think I am. I am more confident in my writing and my voice than I ever was before. So how did I get there? I stopped giving a shit about any of the people who were not going to “get” me. That was it. That simple. I stopped tempering my language because people who don’t know me might mistake my profanity for ignorance. I stopped rethinking overlarge words that fit or mundane words that weren’t impressive enough, and I said what I had to say… and then I edited the hell out of it. (Anyone who tells you voice is natural and comes with no editing is a moron… writing is more editing than writing… when I find a writer who doesn’t follow that, I don’t want to read them.)

Oh, and what you have to say… remember? I said we’d get back to that. Voice and theme go hand in hand as far as I can tell. And some writers have more than one theme that they work with, some may not pay any attention to it at all… they’re just telling a story and don’t notice that their stories all have the same finite number of themes. YOU have something to say. You wouldn’t be writing if you didn’t have anything to say. There is something deeper to this profession than sheer love of words… and yeah, that’s part of it, but it’s not the whole. If I only loved the words, I’d be perfectly content to devour great works by other authors. But it’s not only that with us, we have something to say, and that something, whether deep or frivolous, something to move us or move mountains, something just to make us laugh, that’s as imperative to our voice as the way we turn a phrase. You just can’t have a voice with nothing to vocalize… it would just be a hum, or a moan, or a whimper.

So how did you find your voice? And what have you got to say? Figured out your themes yet?

Writerly Reference for the Masses or Help a Writer Out!!!

First, A Little Inspiration

I thought I’d start this blog with a few references to some of the things that inspired me this week... the first I found at Jaye’s Blahg , sorry I didn’t leave a comment, Jaye... It was a little too compelling and thought provoking for words – but I checked your links multiple times... if anyone is looking for the most inspiring message about getting over life’s obstacles, go visit Jaye.

The next one I found at Angela’s Blog. It’s a prayer for mothers of teenagers, and it was both compelling and heartrending, so if you get a chance give it a visit.

Now a little Writerly Advice for the Masses

A blogger I met long ago at the now defunct blogging community I used to frequent is off to a fantastic start in her writing career. When I met Colleen Katana her voice drew me in immediately. Upon talking with her I found that she’d always wanted to write and had played around with stories but had never studied publishing or fiction writing... you would never know it to read her – her voice is that fresh and inviting naturally. A great example of this can be found in her piece, The Night I Flew.

Colleen has already completed her first book, a memoir, which is in the submission stages – Yay, You, Colleen!!! That’s a fantastic accomplishment! She contacted me because she’s looking to improve her craft and is interested in finding workshops or forums where she can get feedback and interact with other writers. So, I thought the best way to go about it was to put up a post asking all of the bloggers, who have been so great at helping me along and exchanging information, to help me out. First, I’d love it if you all would take a few minutes to stop over at Colleen’s and get to know her – it’s not much of a favor, as you’ll find her both witty and fun.

Next, I’d like to put together a little list of forums and areas where there are other writers exchanging ideas and techniques, information on publishing... and I’m sure you each have your own favorites, so if we can list them all in the comments this can become a great resource for all of us. Lastly, if anyone out there is part of an online critique group or writer’s circle and you think you have room for another, let us know.

My favorite writing communities so far have been Compuserve. My friend, Malcolm Campbell, recommended this one to me a while back and the writers there are both welcoming and knowledgeable. If you visit, you’ll notice the folders for forums on the left hand side of your screen. If you write children’s, there’s a folder marked YA and they also have a kidcrit group that’s fabulous, but you have to be a member to participate... If you’d like to participate with that group, post a message in YA for Marsha or Rose with the subject line ‘wave the magic wand’ to request access.

Another forum that people rave about is Absolute Write Water Cooler. I’ve stopped over there a number of times but haven’t really participated yet, so if someone else is more experienced there, feel free to give us some feedback. The nice thing with this community is that there are a lot of agents and publishers who frequent as well as accomplished authors.

One of the best references besides Writer’s Market, and a free one to boot, for researching prospective agents is Agent Query.

Okay guys, anything else you can add or help out with would be great. This should be good to get the ball rolling, but I’m hoping we can accumulate a lot of really great references for all of us...

As a side, I think the link thing is fixed, but Ello asked about my links a few days ago, so I’m not sure... If you have a problem getting to the sites I’ve linked, let me know and I’ll post their html address without the link. To make a link on these fields I’ve been leaving out the quotation marks before and after the address, I don’t know why it doesn’t work with them in, but that seems to be the problem.

For those of you who didn’t know, I’m hosting a book club blog on Patricia Wood’s Lottery. Please visit the post and see if you might like to participate. I’m really excited as Patricia’s offered to participate in the discussion and it’s really wonderful to have the author on hand to discuss a novel with...Hope to see you all there.