Monday, August 10, 2009

Sunday Scribblings: New Voice

San Antonio, Texas through the castle window


I have been thinking about voice lately. I read a number of blogs on a semi-regular basis and it seems like few of them are having troubles finding their voice lately. Or perhaps I hear their cries as my ears are attuned to these struggles. One blogger wrote openly of her problems finding something to write about. It must be hard to find something to appease the hordes of people who turn up to her blog, their mouths open like hungry baby birds, waiting for her to feed them something, anything.

I must admit that I find that blogger to be an average writer at best. That comment says more about me than it does about her. I don't like her writing style - it feels almost desperate to me, she tries too hard to grab me, her jokes are over worked and her topics bland and out of my experience, borrowed from the numerous tragedies around her. I feel nothing of her voice in her writing. If the words I read on these rare occasions are truly her voice, it seems whiny and petulant and best forgotten.

Another blogger I visit on the same rare basis has always irritated me which is, again, more about me than her. She of the pretty melancholy, the perfect husband, the desperate yearning for a baby and the tragic fertility journey.

So I wonder - are we voiceless without our struggles? Are they really who we are? Or is there something of us that lives and breathes and speaks outside of this journey to find meaning in our lives? I would like to think so. My voice is not my lovely dogs, my struggle with maintaining a healthy weight, the loss of family members, my education or my friends and family. My voice exists outside of all of that, sitting on a wooden stool in a small corner of my soul dressed in a white cotton dress, its hair loose and damp. It smiles sometimes, and cries sometimes. It simply is. It doesn't care about the window dressing of my life, no matter how meaningful or dull or painful it is to me. My voice is my voice and she waits for me to be silent for long enough to hear her speak.

I've been listening a great deal lately. Her voice has been my voice, has helped me discover the main character's voice in my novel. As I painstakingly build a world for my protagonist to live in, I can hear my own voice whisper and giggle and share herself with me. If I write from that part of me - the part that is always new, always fresh and always authentic - I can't imagine how I could ever go wrong.

5 comments:

floreta said...

nice thoughts! at first i thought you were being too judgmental (that's me being judgmental by the way *wink*)..but i see where you're going with it. i'd also like to think you are more than just your struggles. i think that something outside of that lies in the realm of the spiritual..

anthonynorth said...

Many writers become what they are due to adversity. This allows you to look inside yourself. However, from there, I feel many bloggers need to lighten up a bit and use this ability as a tool, not a cause.

Dee Martin said...

I'm a little envious that you can be so certain of that voice. I struggle with it but I'm pretty new to writing. Maybe struggles are where we begin, but seeing past that or using it as a vehicle to travel somewhere else? Not sure but this is something I will be thinking about.

Bobbie said...

I'm working with my "voice" as well. I tend to think my writings are stupid. lol Poetry I'm ok on. I'm to the point of trying out and playing. With short stories and such, not at all confident. Yet that inner voice yells emphatically at me to write anyway lol.

Writing is unique as the person. Some draw strength from their hurts and triumphs. Others draw on something different. It's fascinating the differences, and yes...I agree that the writing maybe is not wrong, but more how the reader interprets it. I'd like to think everyone is bigger than their struggles. At the same time, I think it depends where the writer is on the journey through the struggle. If I make any sense here... Or am I turning into your case in point? lol

Daily Panic said...

Writing is such expression for everyone. I can be a whinny crybaby too! I think at times that i want my writing "voice" to be more entertaining. Most of the time my personal posts end up to be some gripe about silly things, but it is always just the excercise of writing - to get that one good sentence and figure out several other sentences to work around it.