“A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.”
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE, FROM FAUST
To begin this chapter I draw upon the whimsical wisdom of Dr. Seuss, who wrote in his authentic, unparalleled, memorable voice, “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”
Authenticity is a key part of your writing voice and your impact on readers. The irony about authenticity is that often you are the last person to figure out what is authentic about yourself. Similarly you may not yet know what your voice is—part of the journey is learning to determine that—but I guarantee that others could identify the “you-ness” of you if asked. I always take it as a compliment when someone hears a song or reads a quote or a book and says, “This made me think of you,” or buys me a gift that is so magnificently perfect for me. This tells me that I possess unique qualities that others can identify.
As a writer, you will (and must) learn to distinguish an authentic voice. Or you may already be aware of your sensibility and wish to whittle it into new shapes. In this chapter, I want you to think about what that voice is or might be. I guarantee there is a you-ness to your writing. Defining elements distinguish your writing from that of your best friend (or arch enemy), your teachers, best-selling authors you admire, or even me. And beneath that, there are elements that are remarkably, indelibly, magnificently you, which no other writer on the planet possesses, because these elements only came into being with the rise of your mind. It’s easy to believe that someone else has a more interesting voice, a better way of telling a story, a more compelling handle on language, or even just better material to work with, but the fact is, how and what other people write has very little bearing on your writing. What’s your voice? What are your themes? How do sentences sing to you? What kinds of characters do you carve out of the ether of creativity and shape on the page?
If you have any doubt, let me remind you:
Your voice is worthy of being read
If, however, you still aren’t sure of the composition of your voice, the following are some tips for finding it.
In seeking your voice, look to your obsessions and desires: that which haunts you and keeps you up at night. Think of the books you like, the shows you watch, the music that evokes deep emotion within you. The way words stick in your inner ear and the rhythms of your prose combine and manifest in your voice. As do the dialects you’re familiar with and the kinds of conversations you are drawn to eavesdrop upon. Voice is an amalgam of your tastes, your interests, your terrors, and your deepest desires.
You may have also heard voice described as “style.” Just as you have a style in the way you clothe yourself and arrange your home, you style your words, and, more important, your thoughts, in very specific ways. But the deepest contribution to your voice is your personal themes.
Writers are incredibly impressionable creatures. That is, we take in, hold, absorb, and then mutate the experiences that happen to and around us—and then put them on the page. By pulling from the roots of your formative years as well as from the events of last week, you can find recurring characters, settings, tones, and moods if you learn to see them. You already hold inside you all the words, characters, and settings you need to write thousands of pages.
But don’t take my word for it; consider this quote from Albert Camus, from the introduction to his Lyrical and Critical Essays: “Every artist is undoubtedly pursuing his truth. If he is a great artist, each work brings him nearer to it, or at least, swings still closer toward this center, this buried sun where everything must one day burn.”
Camus was a man of metaphor, of course, but what he means is that you already have a “buried sun”—a treasure chest, really—of language, love, life experience, themes, and more either waiting to be excavated and revealed or molded into shape. It doesn’t mean everything you write must be about you or that you must follow to the letter the famous writer’s axiom “Write what you know.” To write what you know means to write what compels and fascinates you. For example, when I attended my masters in writing program at Bennington College, my professors—all of them published authors—helped me see that I continually repeated certain themes in my work. In fact, Alice Mattison suggested that I could call my collection of stories Bad Mothers and Absent Fathers.
To this day, though I write about all kinds of subjects that compel me (everything from healing to dark family secrets), at the root of all my fiction are themes of dysfunctional parenting and parenthood. This is not to say that I actually had a bad mother and an absent father—I could have gleaned these themes just as easily from the copious after-school specials I watched, which usually featured children from broken homes, and the novels about orphans that I loved reading. People who claim to be able to heal and people who have had psychic experiences (neither of which have happened to me) also fascinate me, and those themes make their way into my work often. What my mentors helped me see was that by understanding my themes, I could learn to write about them differently, in new ways, with new eyes and better results, and thus consciously mold my voice. (See more in the “Work It” section of this chapter.)
Finding your voice also means writing about the areas of your expertise: your job, your hobbies, the topics you have a vested interest in. Some of the best novels have derived from work authors do in their daily lives. Rene Denfeld, who works as a criminal investigator with death row inmates, wrote a powerful novel, The Enchanted, that is set in a prison and features characters drawn from the real work she does. Rebecca Lawton’s novel Junction, Utah draws largely from her work as one of the first female river guides in the Grand Canyon back in the seventies. In your own work, you can draw on your experience as a teacher, a plumber, or a therapist—or whatever occupation you have. Your life informs your work, fleshes it out, gives it taste, color, and full-bodied emotion. If you sit in a room all day, every day, and try to generate material, you may find yourself running a bit dry. Sure, your imagination can come into play, but I believe there is no better material for your writing than what you experience. Therefore, to write what you know also means to “write what you have experience with.” And, yes, you can go out and obtain experience in order to write about it. The novelist Jean Hegland once told us in a writing workshop I took that she was training to become certified as a midwife in order to write about it accurately. I know writers who have learned how to ride a unicycle, lived on the streets, learned how to bake, and more just to bring authenticity to their work.
Is there some activity you’ve always wanted to try, some skill or profession you’ve always wanted to learn? Do it in service of your writing, and you’ll have the best excuse ever: “I’m doing this for my art.”
Real, memorable, authentic writing may look different for each person, but it can only exist in the presence of vulnerability. To show your real self and access your true voice, you have to pull down the veil of illusion and write in a way that lays bare your mind, your heart, your secrets, and your longings. This is an act of claiming yourself and saying: This is me, and I won’t pretend to be anyone else. Most people I know, myself included, read to find connection, validation, and understanding in the words of others. Donna Tartt says novels are written “by the alone for the alone.” Ultimately the best way to reach anyone is to be vulnerable.
But vulnerability comes with anxiety for many. (See later chapters on how to handle criticism, rejection, taboo, and sabotage.) The key is to remember that your vulnerability touches others’ vulnerable places and illuminates them. It bears witness for those who can’t do so on their own behalf. Think of the times you’ve read a line, a quote, a whole book even, when you felt seen, heard, and validated by an author you’ve never met. Thanks to the vulnerability of others, you may find permission inside yourself to be real and open, too.
This past year I’ve been reading a lot of personal essays published in such journals as The Rumpus, The Manifest-Station, and Full Grown People. The bravery and beauty of people sharing their stories has given me permission to do the same, to write about difficult subjects in a way that I have found healing as well as inspiring. This new permission to be vulnerable is now infusing itself into all aspects of my writing—I’m weaving more personal emotion into my fiction and telling the truth more plainly.
I like to remember what social scientist and author Brenè Brown says: “Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.”
If you’re like most writers I know, you’ve probably experienced a feeling similar to this: After reading X Author’s work, I never want to write again!
At one point or another, most of us suffer from envy, desiring to write like other talented writers. And it’s understandable—the literary landscape is rich with a symphony of voices and resonant with talent.
One of my best friends, Amy, wrote poetry in college about one of her favorite topics: the natural world. She told a teacher: “I want to write a poem about leaves, but that’s been done so many times.”
The teacher wisely said, “But every poem about leaves is different. Write your poem about leaves.”
Another friend of mine, Nanea, who writes powerful essays, confessed, “I always feel my life is so vanilla that I don’t have anything interesting to say.” And then she proceeded to send me an essay about the absurdity of death and the resilience of the human spirit in which “vanilla” never even made an appearance.
This is all to say that you are not always the best person to judge your uniqueness (especially if you’re feeling low or insecure). But you are the only one who can make a difference in the quality of your writing. Only you can seek and capture and hone that which makes your writing special.
When you doubt your voice, speak to yourself the way you would a best friend struggling to value herself. Says Anne Lamott, “I doubt that you would read a close friend’s early efforts and, in his or her presence, roll your eyes and snicker. I doubt that you would pantomime sticking your finger down your throat. I think you might say something along the lines of, ‘Good for you. We can work out some of the problems later, but for now, full steam ahead!’” You wouldn’t be mean to your friend if she asked you to assess her work, and you also wouldn’t encourage her to stop or abandon meaningful pursuits. When you hear the voices saying you aren’t good enough and you don’t have anything to say, talk them down. Remind them that you are the only one who can write the way you do. Your voice is worthy. Your voice is unique.
Recently I was surprised to discover, from responses to a series of Facebook status updates I made, that I often use words with meanings not everyone knows, like quotidian, gravid, somnolent, and plangent. I don’t use them because they sound important or fancy; I use them because they are an inherent part of my lexicon—the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge—and they made their way into common usage in my speech and writing. Plus, I like the way they sound. As an only child, my primary form of entertainment was reading, which has carried over into my adulthood. (Reading widely is a wonderful way to stretch your vocabulary, by the way.) I soon came to realize that these words were part of my written voice, that they emerge regularly (and sometimes need to be pared back from excess usage), and that even when I try to curb them they show up. They’re just a part of my lexicon.
You, too, have a lexicon, whether you know it or not. Some writers’ voices are colored by their geography. Southern writers often have a noticeable voice that’s drawn as much from the literal sound of the Southern accent as from the rich physical geography and powerful history; writers who speak multiple languages often bring their first language over into English. Writers who grew up among highly intellectual people may write differently from writers who grew up among those who never graduated high school. And trying to force yourself into another person’s “voice” is not only nearly impossible—unless you’re an expert mimic—it’s tantamount to tossing away your own style and individuality. Better to learn to become aware of and familiar with the language you use. If you feel you’d like to stretch your vocabulary, there are easy ways to do this, but instead I recommend getting to know yours as though it’s a language you’re learning for the first time.
In chapter two I asked, “What are you willing to risk as a writer to go for your goals, to drum up your dreams?” It’s a question only you can answer and one that may take some meditation time. But inside the answer is a map that will lead you toward authenticity if you let it. Once you know what you’re willing to risk, you will be more inclined to make choices that align with what feels right for you. Your Writer’s Code is the foundation of your authenticity. Once it’s in place, you have a plan you can stick with, even when faced with the desire or demand to conform.
So now you’re stumbling, running, or waltzing toward the discovery of your voice. Someone wants you to write something “a little more like this.” Or perhaps he’s asking, “Could you just change the theme of it?”
Can you? Will you?
You can. You might. But does it resound with the code you made for yourself? Do you really want others to dictate what you say and how you say it? I venture you’re better off writing like you.
It’s natural to look for support, encouragement, and help when things get hard; in fact, I recommended forming a Creative Support Team in the last chapter. But being your own ally means that:
Being your own ally means that you stop looking outside yourself for validation and affirmation, and find it, generate it even, inside yourself first. I know that may sound a little easier said than done. I’ll speak more extensively on this in chapter eight, “Go Where You Are Welcome.”
1. When you meet with resistance in your writing or feel uncertain about whether you’re writing something true to you, ask, How am I being vulnerable here? What is another way I can express this authenticity where I may either be heard or gain the skills or connections I need?
2. Comb through your less-formal writing, the writing no one will see—journals, letters, notes for stories—and highlight phrases that stand out and words you use often. Become familiar with your own lexicon and learn to polish and be proud of it.
3. Now go through your more formal work: the stories, novels, and essays written with the idea of publication or feedback. Notice recurring themes, happenings, and characters. Do you return often to favorite settings? What scenarios, moods, and tones show up over and over? Make a list and watch your unique voice emerge.
We all have different bodies that move in different ways and are comfortable with different kinds of exercise. What we all have in common is a need to take breaks from extended periods of sitting and writing. Whether you love slow stretching or hard cardio, pick from one of the following exercises for your five-minute stretch break. A quick Google or YouTube search will show you how to do any of the following. If you have injuries, please be careful and cautious, or consult your doctor.