The Many Voices of a Writer

Voice. Tone. Inflection.

It's something I've been thinking about lately. Writing professors often speak of "finding your voice" as a writer. Once you have that settled, it makes the writing process easier, because your voice becomes subconscious, and in some ways determines what you write about. My voice for fiction is slow and steady, controlled, deliberate. I find myself writing about small towns and inner struggles with the most success. (A professor once compared me to Flannery O'Connor--one of the biggest compliments I have ever received.) My voice for blogging, as a friend recently told me, is outgoing and bold--much more so than I am in real life. My voice for academic writing is, well, academic. None of these styles are voices I "put on" or adopt consciously. They just happen as I write.

So what determines a writer's voice? Is it personal experience? Subconscious repetition of others? Completely random? Maybe it's a mix of all three. It's hard to say. I don't know how mine developed. I may be lucky in that mine did come so easily. I never thought about it until my professors started talking about it. When I read other students' work, it was often obvious that they were still finding theirs. Of course I still have a long ways to go, but I at least have a good feel for it, and I can't seem to escape it unless I consciously try to. I guess that's supposed to be a good sign.

Once you have a settled voice, however, the fun starts. Because then you get to start playing with it. Two of my favorite short stories were written in strong voices. One was of a young girl in first person POV who prattled on and on about the "clowns in politics" her daddy told her about. The other, and more recent, was the third person POV of a young autistic man who thinks he killed his baby brother fifteen years ago. I had so much fun playing with voice; the stories wouldn't have worked otherwise.

I have had two recent encounters with people regarding my various voices that really made me think. The first was when the friend I mentioned before e-mailed me in response to my last post.

"I love reading your posts, by the way. They speak of a Laura who is constantly angry, bold, and outspoken, vs. the Laura I know."

I would have to agree with this sentiment, in some respects. I blog for the sole purpose of expressing the thoughts and ideas I have that I am incapable of relating in real life. What you read here is a part of me you won't see anywhere else. So please don't expect to. The first rule of blogging: don't talk about blogging. If you try to corner me in real life and talk about what I write here, I will evade your questions, answering in one word and running in the opposite direction as soon as I can. Leave all the comments you went--you can even e-mail me--but please do not try to talk to me about it. (Oh, and I'm not a constantly angry person. Usually.)

The second encounter I had happened today at work. My boss praised me for "losing my scholastic voice" in an article I wrote. I wasn't sure how to feel about that. Yes, Mountain Home is not the place for scholastic treatises on Hume's "purple patches." I understand that. But at the same time, I have spent the last four years of my life seriously working to improve that scholastic voice to the point where it might be taken seriously by academia. (I never said I got there, but I tried.) So if I managed to lose it completely five months after graduation, well, I don't see that as a victory, per se. I guess it's a manner of balancing it all and separating the voices in my head so they don't pop up in inappropriate places.

So I guess the only question left is a personal one for me: Where is all of this leading me? I've considered graduate school in literature or creative writing (or, if I wanted to kill myself, a program melding the two). I've considered trying to write for publication. And I've considered not bothering with any of that and continuing on with blogs and personal journals. I think it's important, whatever I end up doing, to keep working on all of these voices. Who knows, maybe I can be like Joyce Carol Oates and do it all. That would be interesting.