Speak Up

What do I sound like? I don’t remember. Probably a lot worse than I sound when I talk in the shower. In the shower, when I’m talking to myself, I sound confident, self-assured, a bit insufferable in an acceptable way, only because I’m so good. I’ve just recorded myself reciting “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and damned if I don’t have a childish/child-like timbre to my voice. Damn.

How many of us truly know our own voice? When I was still one of The Chosen, they threw the cliché at me a lot. “Find your voice.” Thanks, that’s real helpful. They never really followed it up with anything, just “Find your voice.” Not only did we get sent off into the literary desert to find our voice, we had to determine what the hell a voice was. I love direction, especially when it’s all cardinal directions at the same time.

I liked to think that voice meant style. Find your writing style, the little hooks and tricks that bookmark your writing as exclusively your own. In effect, this meant you had to develop your own serial number, so if someone stole your work, you could readily identify your own writing with a simple comparison to past work. Finding your voice meant getting insurance against plagiarists. Problem is, the best insurance against plagiarists is crappy writing. You don’t copy off the D students, unless you were the F student.

We were writers, damnit. No, excuse me, authors. We were authors. Writing is too commonplace. Anyone can write, but how many people auth? Not too damn many. I always forget that there’s something mystical about writing, something the ordinary person can’t comprehend, much less embrace. So, maybe there’s something more to voice than just mere style. Perhaps some unique quality all my own that cannot be discovered until I stop looking for it. If that’s right, then when I stop looking for it, then I’ll find my voice. For the first time.

Then, you have to take into account the vocal component. Your physical voice and literary voice are so intertwined, like the snakes on the caduceus, to develop one and let the other rot is like raising up one child by having it stand on the back of the other. Some people believe your writing should be of roughly the same quality as your normal speaking voice. Hence, the key to finding my voice is elocution lessons, and never to use slang ever again, unless it fits the story, which it might not. Unless it does.

There’s a possibility that voice doesn’t exist, and they’re justifiying our education through a snipe hunt. Maybe what no one has realized is that we all write the same, and the only difference is word choice, word order, punctuation, organization, etc.

So, we don’t know what voice is, but we don’t need to in order to find it. Just start writing, and keep writing. Write until you want to throw up on the page. Write until it your words are just vomit on the page. Keep going. You’re bound to get better. Voices may not be as unique as fingerprints, but they’re probably all special. Just keep writing, and learn from the process. Even if you’re just writing a bus schedule, or a business letter, keep on plugging away.

As I sit here trying to conclude this, I remember just how hard conclusions are. This leads me to the topic of the next entry.