I've been thinking about voice.
People so often use "voice" as a reason to recommend books. The writer always has a "bold" or "vivid" or "enchanting" voice and I'm never quite sure what that means. Despite that, I referred to a writer's "cool voice" in a book recommendation I made to a few friends today. Gah. I hate it when I write things things like that -- things I really haven't thought about but they just sort of fit into whatever the larger thing is that I'm writing.
As I was thinking about this, I read this interview with Elizabeth Crane. I've read a couple of her short stories and I recently ordered both of her books. I discovered recently that she has a blog and I've been reading it primarily because she has several posts about things that I'd considered writing about here (Stuff magazine, for example, which magically shows up at my apartment every month despite the fact that neither I or my two other female rommates have ordered it). Anyway, Crane's writing is often described as "rambunctious" and that seems about right. She uses run-on sentences and creative punctuation and the thing about that that's cool is that you can hear her telling you the story as you read. She had this comment about her writing that I found interesting:
That comment just made so much sense to me. I love, love, love reading and writing letters and emails and I think it's because those formats facilitate telling a story the way you would if the recipient was sitting across from you. It's so much easier to get sidetracked or let yourself get caught up in a description or be clever in a letter than it is in a short story or an essay that's supposed to follow a certain format.
A few years ago, I took a class on storytelling and the Gospel of Mark. Each week, the class broke into small groups to perform the stories for the rest of the class. It was fascinating to see the multitude of ways the somewhat sparse stories of Mark could be told. It also made me think that if you want to tell a story in a personal way, if you want to guide the reader's interpretation and emotions, then you have to let your speaking voice break in. You have to find ways to wink at the reader and to speed up their reading when you're excited and slow it down when you're not.
I've been reading "update" emails from a group of friends today and all of them have managed, in some way, to do these things. It's incredible how natural all of it is when we're conversing with friends but how challenging it can be when we're writng for ourselves or an unknown audience.
And, that's what I've been thinking about today; along, of course, with the information and statistics I need to hunt down before I can really start writing the introduction for the article I'm working on. Guess which one's more interesting.
As I was thinking about this, I read this interview with Elizabeth Crane. I've read a couple of her short stories and I recently ordered both of her books. I discovered recently that she has a blog and I've been reading it primarily because she has several posts about things that I'd considered writing about here (Stuff magazine, for example, which magically shows up at my apartment every month despite the fact that neither I or my two other female rommates have ordered it). Anyway, Crane's writing is often described as "rambunctious" and that seems about right. She uses run-on sentences and creative punctuation and the thing about that that's cool is that you can hear her telling you the story as you read. She had this comment about her writing that I found interesting:
I say this often but I used to be a big letter writer before e-mail. My letters were, in some ways, really so much better than the stories I was writing then, or whatever I was writing at that time. I would write rough drafts of them, of whatever story was happening at the moment I would make it into entertainment. People would say “Oh you should write about this,” but I didn’t think I could write a story that way.
That comment just made so much sense to me. I love, love, love reading and writing letters and emails and I think it's because those formats facilitate telling a story the way you would if the recipient was sitting across from you. It's so much easier to get sidetracked or let yourself get caught up in a description or be clever in a letter than it is in a short story or an essay that's supposed to follow a certain format.
A few years ago, I took a class on storytelling and the Gospel of Mark. Each week, the class broke into small groups to perform the stories for the rest of the class. It was fascinating to see the multitude of ways the somewhat sparse stories of Mark could be told. It also made me think that if you want to tell a story in a personal way, if you want to guide the reader's interpretation and emotions, then you have to let your speaking voice break in. You have to find ways to wink at the reader and to speed up their reading when you're excited and slow it down when you're not.
I've been reading "update" emails from a group of friends today and all of them have managed, in some way, to do these things. It's incredible how natural all of it is when we're conversing with friends but how challenging it can be when we're writng for ourselves or an unknown audience.
And, that's what I've been thinking about today; along, of course, with the information and statistics I need to hunt down before I can really start writing the introduction for the article I'm working on. Guess which one's more interesting.
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