And We're Back

We now return to your regularly scheduled navel-gazing and random pontification.

When I started out, I never really gave much thought to what my "voice" would be when I write in this space. We talk about voice quite a bit in writing, don't we, and you'll hear it said that one should "write the way that they speak." And that's good advice, assuming that when you open your mouth, you are witty and clever and interesting. Most of us aren't, though. We lose our train of thought. We make random references to pop culture that's entirely inappropriate outside of its context. The simple truth is that, yes, while you need to have a voice when you write, it needs to be a different voice. A "writing voice."

I was accused by somebody recently that I don't write the way that I speak. I think it was because I used the word "thus" while making a point about something. First of all, I happen to think that I do use "thus" and "therefore" and other such fancy language in my daily lexicon, for the simple fact that I'm the kind of pretentious nerd that would employ the word "lexicon."

Secondly, I don't care if my writing voice is the same as my speaking voice, because these are two entirely different means of communication. Anybody that thinks otherwise, quite simply, is wrong, and that's just facts. Because the truth is that if I was telling you this verbally, you would be seeing my hands move. You could see my face and my body language, hear the inflection in my voice and all of this would contribute to your understanding and interpretation of what it is that I am saying.

Writing, on the other hand, is much more of a magician's game. We're illusionists, we're shysters, we're the man behind the curtain with our levers and our smoke tricks and our microphone. Everything that we do is an attempt to recreate the same emotional response in text that you would acquire through the contextual clues of the verbal communication. And that's why we do things the way we do; that's why we use words and punctuation in specific ways, use run-on sentences and fragments and all sorts of other little games so that you get the feeling of communication even though I'm miles away, hours gone, not really here except for the shadow of my self left behind in these words.

This is better, isn't it? I'm referring to the above little rant, in a jarring and unfocused transition. I like this better than what I wrote on Monday, even though I feel strangely proud of Monday's post. I actually went back and reread it a few times. But is that me in those words? I was writing from a place of emotion, writing out feelings that I had in those moments. There is a clarity to that writing, a raw honesty that lacks the tricks and construction of what I'm doing now. It's harder to write that way, that grimly honest way, harder for me, anyway. Surely this is better, isn't it?

I think we both know that the answer is no, it's not better. Because on Monday, I had something to say. I had something real to put out there, and you can always tell, you can feel when it's real. This, here, right now, this is something that I'm doing, but it's not quite the same. The prose might be all in a row, the voice (ha ha!) might be dry and witty and whatever else, but it's Monday that'll stick out. If you went and read all the posts I wrote, the ones you'll remember are the ones that made you feel something. You'll remember Monday because it made you feel bad. You'll remember something from a few weeks ago that might have been particularly funny.

It's a sobering moment, to imagine that to be the kind of writer that I want to be, to be the storyteller that I hope I'll become, that I might have to become that person I was on Monday, that I might have to tear into myself to pull out the reality necessary to make it all worthwhile.

They say you have to bleed for your art. I guess I never really thought about what that meant before today.