So, writing. With all the activity of the move and the book sale (!!!) and settling into a radically different and much improved lifestyle, I haven’t been writing much. That makes me nervous. I’ve never spent so much time away from the page as I have in these past few weeks, and though I’ve tried to break back into my work, it’s been difficult. Part of that is due to some of the rejections I’ve received along the way.
I don’t know about you, but I can take any amount of criticism about the story, or a reader’s failure to connect with the characters. Problems with structure, lack of depth, word count. Whatever. But criticism about voice is hard to hear, because it’s the one element of writing that feels unfixable. A writer’s entire sensibility is wrapped up in the way he chooses what to look at and how he describes it, how he experiences the rhythm in language, structures his sentences and paragraphs, how he strings a thought together. Voice is the essence of the writer, the truest representation of the mind behind the work. Dismissal of a writer’s voice is painful. The rejection feels personal.
Lately when I sit down to write, and in spite of the enthusiasm and positive energy that come with a brand-new book deal, I feel self-conscious. I hear myself writing and I’m annoyed.
The solution is to say fuck it, to sit down and write and keep writing and get over it, which is what I intend to do. But I like to work with the criticism I receive, and I’m not sure what to do with this. While every project has a narrative style of its own, the writer’s voice is the thread running through them. How is it possible to change what feels so innate? Do writers reach a point when their voices become fixed, or does voice continue to evolve over the years?
What do you think?
Photograph by Joyce Tennyson
I think voice becomes stronger and more distinctive the more one writes.
I also think that voice can be blocked by worrying about it. Write by feel, edit by ear.
And keep muscling through, Averil, because your voice is amazing.
Yes! What Sarah said!!
‘write by feel, edit by ear.’ Oooh I like that. It’s going on a post-it in the corner of my monitor.
I like that too. Pass the post-its, Mary Lynne.
There’s critique you should listen to and critique you shouldn’t.
Anyone telling you your voice is somehow wrong shouldn’t be listened to at all.
And of course voice changes.
Spend a month reading the same really great book over and over, a book with an amazing, wonderful, striking voice, and check out your new writing voice… It won’t be exactly that of the book you’re reading, but it will be somewhere between that voice and the one you started the month with.
Yeah, that’s true. I remember the writing I did while I was reading Lolita. I had unconsciously picked up some of the cadence, as if I’d been caught in a powerful river. Sadly, the effect faded after I’d finished the book. Maybe I’ll read it again (don’t look, Lyra!) and see if it helps.
I believe your voice is amazing, too. And I’m wondering what “they” said about it, because I can’t imagine what they perceive as needing to be changed about it.
I just told somebody this evening that I was surprised to hear my writing voice in a book I tried to write when I was eleven. I can’t imagine anyone saying that was what needed to change in my work. They would be telling me to change the most basic part of my personality, and that’s just not going to happen. It hasn’t since the first thoughts I can remember having, the ones I wasn’t able to write down. Even when I experiment, I bet something about my writing still sounds like I wrote it.
If you want to work with this criticism, maybe try small doses of whatever they’re saying in practice sentences or paragraphs. If you try it for a week and nothing about it feels like building muscle, even by degrees, then definitely fuck it. Why waste time? That’s what I think.
A training program! Sparks, I love it. I’d forgotten about writing exercises, and they’re exactly what I need right now.
Thank you for the reminder.
I think that if you listen to too many voices when you sit down to write then your tone becomes inhibited, conditioned. It’s so hard to balance what your hear in your critics’ voices with what you know must come out. I say spew it all onto the page, absorbing technical stuff that you know will strengthen your work, but connect with your voice first. Then dabble. Then fix. Even so, not all advice is the best. I once had an editor edit the pants off a story. It was published, but for me it felt flat and tampered with.
It’s so hard feeling watched. But you’re out there Averil. Run with that ball.
I am being watched. Yes, maybe that’s all it is. I tend toward a delinquent mindset to begin with, so the idea of scrutiny makes my neck prickle.
I’d imagine voice evolves over the years, but like you, I try not to be too conscious of it.
But why should you care about that? If it’s the one thing that’s truest about you as a writer, why think to change it or “improve” it or whatever? It is what it is; it is what you are. Honestly, I don’t think most readers even hear a writer’s voice (and I’m not sure they know what tone is either). Just keep on keeping on. That’s what I say.
You might be right. I’m not sure readers think about voice the way we do. They’re thinking about what we write more than the way it’s written.
You got an agent in a matter of seconds and a book deal in a matter of minutes. You haven’t been writing that long (think back to when this was a photography blog), so take those two facts as concrete evidence that you have a gift, a ear, a talent for words.
Now, you get to distance that talent from yourself in order to take anything and everything you can to improve. Look at their suggestions as a way to strengthen your voice, not change it.
In singing, you can have all the natural talent in the world, but that isn’t to say a voice coach can’t improve it by teaching you to breathe, how to use and not use consonants, how to support the notes with your diaphram
All of that is to say, don’t look at it as a critique of something innate. Look at it as great fortune that you are surrounded by people who want your very best work and want you to succeed possibly as much if not more than you do.
Terrific analogy. I should clarify that the agent and editor who signed me do like my voice and would probably not want to change it. The critiques are just bits and pieces I’ve gleaned along the way.
It’s an interesting notion, this distinction between what part of the voice is innate and what is open to outside influence. Maybe every writer’s voice is a bit of both.
This is exactly it, Lyra. I’m a guitar girl to I think of it in those terms. Jimi Hendrix and Brian May and Eddie Van Halen did not first sit on their beds with a guitar and sounds like …. Jimi Hendrix, etc…
They did their thing, and they learned tools to methods to support them along the way. They just kept taking off with what they learned in their own direction, to become more themselves.
i’m with lyra (surprise, surprise, right?)
at this point in the game, the only critiques that matter are your editors. if you can’t stop the ringing in your ears of others, then maybe consider if there’s any agenda–whether it be conscious or unconscious–from the person critiquing your voice.
anyway, i don’t think there’s any definitive rules to anything. including voice.
some writers have it from the first word they write.
others build theirs through the decades.
some have multiple voices.
there are a million and one things that can make us second guess every single syllable we bust out. they’re all a nuisance and not to be trusted.
If only there were a filter to cancel out the unhelpful bits of advice. I’d take my feedback with big black lines throughout, leaving only things like, ‘add another scene here to slow down the pace’ and ‘awkward, revise’. Boom! Done. It’s the nebulous stuff that leads to madness.
Voice develops over time, like we, as people do, but we’re ourselves in the beginning, at the same time. It’s a paradox.
Wherever you go, there you are. In writing as in life, the cliché endures because it’s true.
I’m with Lyra. And I am going for the same metaphor. I do think voice can change, and I think that’s good. I think one can write in different voices (my blog voice, my poetry voice, and my prose voice are all different, although not radically different).
But my metaphor is the violin. You are a violin, not an bassoon. You can imitate the bassoon a little, and that’s a neat effect. But mostly you sound like a violin. However, you can tune the violin, you can play high and sweet or short and harsh, there are many things you can do on a violin, and the more you push yourself—say you play romantic music very well, all broad notes and flowing bow, but the more you learn to play Bach: intricate, mathematical, shorter notes, repetition, the better musician you are.
I’m going overboard with my metaphor here, but you get the idea. Trust yourself and trust your editor (if he/she deserves it).
Your metaphor makes for a fun game: What instrument are you?
Viola, of course.
In my experience voice evolves. I like what Sarah says on this subject.
I’m so impatient, Lisa. I want to hurry the evolution along.
First, words mean things. Is it you “intend to do”? Or is it you “will do”?
Glad we cleared that up. Now on to voice.
Susan says she can hear my voice in everything I write, no matter what character I may be playing on the page. I don’t doubt that this is so, though because I am inside of it, it is not so easy for me to detect.
Gordon says every writer has an “Ur-sentence,” a fundamental manner of putting words together which is learned when language is first learned. He says it’s important to be in touch with this.
Voice. Voices. I hear voices. Not like a schizophrenic hears voices, but through imagination and paying attention, insofar as I have been paying attention.
Is it possible for a writer’s voice to change over time? I think it’s inevitable. Whatever’s not growing is dying, or it’s dead.
Not every voice is pleasant to every ear. So with writing. A writer’s voice–the Ur-sentence–of necessity overlaps with the voice or voices deployed on the page, but the voices are not completely contiguous.
The most important things a writer can do have to do with putting words together on the page in a manner that clearly conveys meaning. Given that there’s effectively an infinite number of ways to do this within grammatical and lexical constraints of intelligibility, to have someone say they don’t like a writer’s voice is about the same as having someone say they don’t like music in the key of B flat major. So be it. They can go listen to something else.
It’s ‘intend’. The other way sounds far too self-assured.
Interesting that you can’t hear your own voice as well as Susan can. This has been my experience as well. I don’t usually hear my voice at all, but when I do, it’s like hearing my voice on an answering machine and realizing I sound like a 12-year-old. I had a strange experience of that after gorging on Shanna’s blog one day. I read everything she’d written to date, and when I came back to my place there was this terrible moment of hearing my voice and being disappointed.
However, as you say, we all make different music. So be it.
P.S. The video gives me Vegas flashbacks. Those dusty boots.
Gives me ’80s flashbacks. Thanks, Tetman.
An editor I worked with in an editing workshop in Aspen last month found a voice in my manuscript I was not hearing. abracadabra a POV change and the plot line cinched up like a purse string. Voice is a witch’s brew of DNA and simple craft. I for one am still learning.
Oh, that’s fantastic. What a gift you received that day.
CJ, a good editor is a gift from the gods, is it not? Over the past couple weeks I’ve had a couple editors give me precious feedback on a story. There were three spots where it wasn’t quite working and they couldn’t tell me exactly what to do, but they could and did point to the spots and say, “Therein trouble lies.” Not only were they right, I wouldn’t have seen the spots without them.
Other spots. Other voices. Since I’m here and it seems on topic, I’ve lately been wrestling with a rewrite (another fucking rewrite, Tetman! Gah, write something new, willya?) and I just couldn’t get a good angle on it. I knew the core story was good–it’s a love story and they’re always good–but my take on it was getting real clunky. A car with square wheels. So last night, I’m dropping off to sleep, and it hit me–the solution–it was in the voice! The voice came to me and I kissed Susan and told her what was up and told her I needed to go get it started and then I would come back to bed and that is what I did. The voice! The voice came to me and was flowing through me like a water through an arroyo after a thunderstorm or an electrical current through a wire when someone throws the switch.
A good editor is what I want more than an agent or a publisher. What I want in an agent or a publisher. A love story!!?? The ultimate challenge.
God, that’s a good feeling, Tetman.
the voice that came is not the voice of any of the characters or of the narrator or any conventional narrative stance, but is the voice of the piece.
Yes. Inspiring as is your success. Delight in it Averil.
In his Introduction to The Best American Essays (2004) Louis Menand makes the case that we commonly mistake writing, especially literary writing, for encoded speech, when it’s really more analogous to singing. His thesis, which was also published as part of a review of Lynne Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves (or however the hell it was punctuated), is so nicely developed that I can’t bear to post only an excerpt here; you’ll have to read the whole thing for yourself.
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/06/28/040628crbo_books1?currentPage=1
If you don’t want to read the book review, the pertinent section on voice begins in the middle of page 2, right next to the cartoon.
“There are probably all kinds of literary sins that prevent a piece of writing from having a voice, but there seems to be no guaranteed technique for creating one. Grammatical correctness doesn’t insure it. Calculated incorrectness doesn’t, either. Ingenuity, wit, sarcasm, euphony, frequent outbreaks of the first-person singular—any of these can enliven prose without giving it a voice. You can set the stage as elaborately as you like, but either the phantom appears or it doesn’t.”
Yikes. This makes me wonder whether I actually understand the meaning of the term.
You’re not the only one. I’ve heard the quality of voice defined in the same terms as a Supreme Court justice used to define pornography: “I know it when I see it.” I once read an article in which respected writers were asked to define voice, and the consensus seemed to be, “Damned if I know.”
Menand’s view isn’t the only one of course, but it gives you something to think about. He doesn’t tell you how to summon your voice, but you can take the metaphor of writing-as-singing and play with it. What is singing? What state of consciousness do we enter when we sing? A singer can be in a cheerful mood when not singing, then immediately belt out a tear-jerker as if her heart were breaking. That’s partly the result of practice and technique, but the singer, without losing herself in the song, has to enter that mind- and heart-space to some degree in order to put it across to the audience. Now apply that to writing. What the metaphor is talking about, for me, is a kind of controlled freedom. Before the pen hits the paper, everything happens in the mind, which is precisely my problem: too much thinking and worrying, not enough singing. I think I’m addicted to mental gymnastics.
And I like Kenneth Atchity’s rule: don’t write until you know what you’re going to say.
You had me nodding until that last bit. I’d never write a damned thing if I waited to figure out what I was going to say.
Averil, you took the words right out of my mouth. I loved the article because it gave me so much to consider, but I’m confused, in a way that makes me feel like searching with my pen (without thinking about ‘voice’ at all.)
Thank you, T-P. I read the article. It was good and good for me.
I’m back to apologize for beating the music metaphor to its death. I’ve been ironing, and my mind never never works properly when I’ve got a hot, steaming iron in my hand.
Ah, don’t apologize. I was trying to imagine myself as a young Jimi Hendrix doing scales on the bed.
I think the term “voice” is problematic. It can mean so many things, and it can also mean nothing. I love this article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/voice-in-fiction-a-favori_b_553662.html
But then again, I love EVERYTHING that goes against the general accepted ideas about writing. I’m bad like that.
It’s so much easier to have someone say they’d prefer 10% fewer adjectives or 5% more description or no italics on the direct thoughts or longer scenes or more sex or less of the word “very.” Specifics are good.
When people criticize voice, it’s usually because they can’t put their finger on the specifics, or maybe, just maybe, they don’t know shit.
I get you, but I don’t think an inability to connect with a writer’s voice is some other unidentifiable thing. There are books I don’t finish because I don’t get off on the voice of the writer. Maybe the style is too literal or hard-boiled or intellectual or whatever, and I fail to engage. For me the recoil feels visual: the writer is making me look at things I don’t want to see.
Sometimes there are books or stories or articles I don’t finish because I’m not in the mood at the time for the writer’s voice, while at another time I will be and can read the works then.
the above was supposed to be a reply to your replay, Averil, but WordPress put it where it put it.
let’s see where this one goes.
That too. But I’m rarely able to connect with something that didn’t grab me the first time around. I should probably try harder.
I think I just prefer calling that same thing “style” because it can change from book to book. I just tried to read a book that sounded like a 1950s detective film, with all the “see, the gal was one of those bombshell types …” WAAAH my brain! It’s like being in a conversation with someone who bores you senseless and makes your brain yawn.
In any case, hang in there.
Your voice is your voice. And apparently it’s good cause you sold your book! Two! Can’t please everyone, so I don’t know that I’d worry about it too much!! Just start writing and see where it goes.
Welcome, and thanks for visiting, Jennine. I’ve enjoyed your comments at Betsy’s place.
Yeah, my voice is fine. But I want to get better and better, you know? I want to write like Joyce Carol Oates when I’m old and gray, I don’t care that it’s irrational.
I am not really sure what is meant by a writer’s voice but I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with yours.
I do agree that a voice develops over time and that I like the sound of yours. I like the lyric things you do as well as the rough stuff– an excellent combo.
Sometimes I wonder if my voice is really mine or is it just an affectation. I worry that I’m getting married to one voice. (Commitment issues, anyone?) Well, worry is not the right word– I mean muse, perhaps. And let myself try new styles to make sure I’m not just falling into a rut. Sometimes using the same voice gives me strength but sometimes it loosens me up to play around.