The Writer’s Voice: An Unconventional Definition

A writer’s voice is that often intangible yet unmistakable something that defines the author’s work. Like literary DNA, it is as unique and complex as a fingerprint. Syntax, diction, dialog, and punctuation are combined with characterization techniques, scene delivery, and other stylistic elements and then distilled into an elixir that lets us see the world through the writer’s eyes.

But there is more to it than that.

The way a writer uses words to shape a story is only the tip of the iceberg. The true essence of a writer’s voice lies far beneath the surface. It is less craft and more courage – less ink and more blood. The text on the page is nothing more than the corporeal manifestation of the very spirit that drives the writer to write. The true voice of a writer is the nameless fire that burns inside, turning up the heat, licking at mind and heart until it becomes unbearable to wait even a single moment longer before putting pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard.

This.

This is the voice you need to listen to.

This is the voice you need to release into the world.

Like your words on the page, this inner voice, this internal fire is yours and yours alone. It may share certain aspects of other writers’ voices, but its particular alchemy cannot be replicated. It came into the world with you and was shaped – violently, subtly, irrevocably – by the journey of your life. Every story you consumed, every experience you enjoyed or endured, every doubt and dream and question became part of your writer’s voice.

Like the audible voice of a singer, a writer’s voice can lie silent for a long time before bursting into the world. And like the singer’s instrument, the writer’s voice must be trained. It must be opened up. Before a singer can perform, she must ground herself, find her stance, and learn to breathe properly. She must be practiced in the art of listening, and willing to spend hours rehearsing a single note, over and over again. Before a singer can let loose with her song, she must find clarity and develop confidence. She must learn the art of interpretation so that she can make every song her own.

So it is with a writer’s voice.

Your voice is not only how you tell your story, it is the story you choose tell. The story you must tell. It is the reason you write. It is the fiery truth that burns in your heart. Your writer’s voice is not merely a matter of grammar and word choice. It is the ache to know, to understand, and to connect. It is, perhaps, the reason you are here at all. Each of us has something to say, something to share. Each of us has a piece of the puzzle that is life. Dancers dance, singers sing, painters paint, parents parent, lovers love, and you – you write with your irrepressible, inimitable writer’s voice.

This is your story. This is your responsibility. Do not stay silent for too long.

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If you’d like to, you can listen to this post.

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Jamie Lee Wallace is a writer who also happens to be a marketer. She helps her Suddenly Marketing clients discover their voice, connect with their audience, and find their marketing groove. She is also a mom, a prolific blogger, and a student of voice and trapeze (not at the same time). Introduce yourself on facebook or twitter. She doesn’t bite … usually.

Image Credit: Navy Blue Stripes

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My Writing Bible

          Rather than make good on the promise with which I ended my last post [subordinate clause], to further explain coordination and subordination in prose [infinitive phrase] and risk losing my readers before the end of this complex, compound sentence [subordinate clause], I’m simply going to make a confession [independent clause]: While in theological matters I’m agnostic at best [subordinate clause], in matters of grammar [prepositional phrase], I’m a fundamentalist [independent clause], and my bible is The Harbrace College Handbook from 1984 [independent clause].

I received my first Harbrace along with my first teaching assignment: Freshman Composition, a required course, at Columbia University, where I was earning my PhD. I’d never taken such a course, and I knew nothing about participial phrases or independent clauses before I had to teach them. Harbrace saved me.

I’d read enough to know what sounded right; Harbrace gave me the rules – and I taught them to my students with the evangelical fervor of the newly converted. My enthusiasm was helpful in keeping my students awake at eight in the morning; assignments from The Book, I suspect, kept some of these students awake at night. Like it or not, students did the exercises. They learned to recognize phrases and subordinate clauses; to identify main clauses and various types of sentences, to avoid sentence fragments and run-ons, and to master techniques for effective emphasis and style.

Harbrace was our foundation text, and it gave us the vocabulary of grammar as well as the symbols I used in the margins of their papers to indicate “wordiness” (W), “awkwardness” (K), “coherence” (COH), as well as the more commonplace SP for “spelling.” My edition has a handy, alphabetical list of these symbols inside the back cover, symbols I still use when editing my own work or that of my peers.

The Book is not all grammar, however. It includes sections on Mechanics, Punctuation, Diction, Effective Sentences and Larger Elements. Look ahead for future posts on these elements of language that all writers need to control in order to write effectively for their intended audience.    

I started teaching in 1983 – the last year that Columbia was all male. The following year, women entered the class, and a new edition of Harbrace came out. It’s this ninth edition that I keep going back to, even though there have been nine more editions since then. I wasn’t aware of grammar changing so much in the last thirty years, but the current, 18^th edition has 848 pages; my ninth edition has only 586. The Eighteenth also lists for a whopping $118 – but of course can be found discounted on line.  Used copies of earlier editions are much less expensive; my beloved Ninth can be found for just pennies.

I still use my Harbrace whenever I teach, whether it be in a prison classroom, a writers’ workshop, or a blog post. I also use it whenever I want to remind myself about one of those gnarly grammatical rules governing relative pronouns that [which?] always leave me uncertain.

Let me be clear: I don’t believe in strict orthodoxy, nor do I think everyone has to genuflect to Harbrace or Strunk & White or The Chicago Manual of Style. In fact, in literary fiction, there are good, strong, arguments for breaking the rules. Language is just the building material; how you use it is what matters.

That said, let me also say that most writing, especially most expository writing, is a matter of exchanging information and opinions, and some adherence to what is known as Standard English is often best for that. And every magazine, journal, academic field and paying editorial market will adhere to a style sheet. As always in writing, it’s paramount to know your audience and use the format they recognize as holy.

Deborah Lee Luskin is novelist, essayist and educator. She is a regular commentator for Vermont Public Radio, a Visiting Scholar for the Vermont Humanities Council and the author of the award winning novel, Into The Wilderness. For more information, visit her website at www.deborahleeluskin.com

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The Writer’s Desk: Messy or Neat?

“If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” – Albert Einstein

Much as there is debate between pansters and plotters, there is debate between the Oscars and Felixes of the writing world. Should a writer’s desk be a vision of clean and regimented order, or an explosion of creative disarray? One group holds that the writer’s workspace should be tidy and organized. They believe that having everything “just so” is essential to the writing experience – everything you need at your fingertips, preferably arranged in straight lines and at right angles. The other group believes in the chaos theory. You can’t see even an inch of their desk’s surface under the wild clutter of accumulated notebooks, stickies, reference books, and bits of scrap paper. These people swear there is a system to the madness and say that if you clean things up, they’ll never be able to find anything.

I’ve always been a bit of a neat freak. Growing up, my room was always spic-and-span – bed made, desk clear, clothes folded and put away. I had an enormous collection of horse statues and each of my equine collectibles had a specific place on my shelf. My cassette tapes were, if not alphabetized, organized by genre, and my stuffed animals were arranged by size – largest ones at the back, smaller ones tucked in front. My sister, on the other hand, had a room that would have made Oscar the Grouch feel right at home – clothes everywhere, half-finished projects sprawling across the floor like some kind of creative suburbia, leftover snacks balanced precariously on the windowsill, and an eclectic collection of makeup and hair accessories adorning random space in bookshelves, desk drawers, and toy chests. Needless to say, my sister and I had our differences.

But, despite what I thought an impossible environment and what she found a horrifyingly fastidious one, each of us managed to make our way in the world … in our own way. Interestingly, our two extremes have mellowed with age. I now have plenty of clutter and chaos in my world, and my sister’s place is much more put together than her room ever was. We each seem to have found our happy medium – a place where things are clean enough that we don’t have to worry about losing pets or small children in the mess, but “loose” enough to ensure we don’t feel like we have to take our shoes off at the door.

My writing desk – an expansive drafting table – is mostly on the “neat” side, but there are pockets of debris that I’m quite attached to. The tool caddy on the side of the desk is full to overflowing with an odd collection of accumulated treasures – pens and pencils of course, but also miniature puppets, tiny candles, pressed leaves, shells, tea tins, a pair of antique scissors, my first dog’s collar, and a few pieces of artwork compliments of my daughter. On the surface of my workspace, just to the right of my ever-present notebook is a small open shrine that includes two pictures of my daughter, a heart stone from my beau, a chestnut from a friend, three sea stones that look like eggs, and a plush hedgehog my parents gave me. In honor of the Halloween holiday, it’s also currently home to a small, ceramic jack-o-lantern that some friends gave me in a gift basket when I was going through my divorce.

I’ve found my balance between Zen and chaos. My desk is an inviting place to me – there is enough white space that I never feel choked or overwhelmed. And yet, the personal flotsam and jetsam make it a warm and cozy spot.

How about you – are you an Oscar or a Felix? And, I’m just curious, are you a panster or a plotter? There may be a connection … 

Jamie Lee Wallace is a writer who, among other things, works as a marketing strategist and copywriter. She helps creative entrepreneurs (artists, writers, idea people, and creative consultants) discover their “natural” marketing groove so they can build their business with passion, story, and connection. She also blogs. A lot. She is a mom, a singer, and a dreamer who believes in small kindnesses, daily chocolate, and happy endings. Look her up on facebook or follow her on twitter. She doesn’t bite … usually.

Image Credit: J. Lim aka “Lustro”

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Word Order

The English language on word order depends.

If that sentence doesn’t convince you, try this:

Take the adverb “only” and place it in different positions in the following sentence.

He said, “I love you.” (Nice thought.)

Only he said, “I love you.” (No one else said it.)

He only said, “I love you.” (He said nothing else.)

He said, “Only I love you.” (No one else does.)

He said, “I only love you.” (Don’t like you much, though.)

He said, “I love only you.” (He doesn’t love any one else.)

He said, “I love you only.” (His love is exclusive.)

In The Elements of Style, Strunk and White advise that “Modifiers should come, if possible, next to the work they modify.” When modifiers are misplaced, the result is ambiguity – and often downright hilarity. Consider this Classified Ad: “Piano for sale by lady with carved legs.”

Because English depends on word order, “with carved legs” describes the lady, not the piano. The prepositional phrase needs to be placed in proximity to what it describes.

Here’s an example from The Harbrace College Handbook. “The doctor said that there was nothing seriously wrong with a smile.” I used Harbrace when I taught Freshman Composition nearly thirty years ago. Surely there have been advances in medicine since my college teaching days, but smiles have always been terrific, especially when it’s the doctor who’s smiling while delivering the good news. “The doctor said with a smile that there was nothing seriously wrong.”

Here’s another example from Harbrace: “A garish poster attracts the visitor’s eye on the east wall.” Kinda gross, really, to hang an eye on the wall. But a poster hung on the east wall will attract a visitor’s eye, and not inspire unintentional images of body parts nailed up for display.

These examples demonstrate the importance of word order at the most basic level. Word order can also be used for emphasis. It is generally accepted usage to put the most important word in a series or a sentence last. “Urban life is unhealthy, morally corrupt, and fundamentally inhuman” (Rene Dubos).

Word order can also lend depth and complexity to prose –while maintaining clarity. “To be French is to be like no one else; to be American is to be like everyone else” (Peter Ustinov).

The craft of writing begins with diction. Words are the raw material of prose, the building blocks of sentences. Successful architecture depends on the order and care with which the raw materials are wrought.

Deborah Lee Luskin is the author of the award-winning novel, Into The Wilderness, “a fiercely intelligent love story” set in Vermont in 1964. She is a regular Commentator on Vermont Public Radio and teaches for the Vermont Humanities Council. Learn more at her website: www.deborahleeluskin.com

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