Finding your voice

English professors, even some high school teachers, talk about "finding your voice". What this is, I guess, is a now-cliche way of saying that when you write, you write in a way which is unique to you and is interesting to the reader. Of course, it is questionable as to whether that last part is as important as the first part. I am not sure how you can avoid being unique, since we all have unique experience from which to draw from when we write. However, I suppose that many writers start off attempting to copy someone they respect or enjoy.

Most of my favorite writers started off by attempting to imitate the great writers of the past. I think of John Keats. He set out to imitate all the great writers of English Literature like Shakespeare and Milton and Spenser. After imitating the greats for some time, finally his poetry took on a life of its own.

I don't know how you write without being unique to yourself and your style. Certainly many writers are very similar and there are always trends in literature which grab the attention of writers in that time. I have always enjoyed the writers who set the trends which lead to big changes in literature. Wordsworth and Hardy and Yeats and Eliot and Miller spring to mind. Wordsworth and Coleridge created a mighty change from the poetry of old to what we now have. Hardy created the modern novel. Yeats and Eliot took poetry out of the Victorian Age into modern times and Miller worked to create modern American drama.

Its not that the writers that came along before or after these writers pale in comparison, but when you can take a genre and shake it loose of the status quo and create something completely new, it really is remarkable.

I submitted some poems to a poetry journal in Birmingham when I was in college. The editor read them and critiqued them for me. He basically didn't like my poetry, with the exception of one of them. He told me that my poetry would be better if I read some of the modern poets. At the time I was a little irritated with his criticism. I knew that my poetry was a bit old fashioned in style. It followed the poetic patterns of the poets I appreciated at the time. But the irritating factor in his criticism was that he wanted me to emulate the modern poets. In effect, he wanted me to copy what was current, rather than what was old fashioned.

I didn't really like that because I wanted to create my own voice. I didn't want to be told that I should emulate someone I didn't really like. That seemed to defeat the purpose of the poetry. I guess I wanted to write like I wanted to write and not like what everyone else was writing. I didn't want to follow the herd.

Perhaps the most important thing I have been told is that I need to grasp the emotional response to what I am writing about and show that on the page. I suppose that if I can't do that then perhaps it is not important that I write about it.

The elements of poetry that are important to me; however, involve the truth of the sentiment and expression. If the words don't depict what is in my head and in my heart then they need to be changed or excised. I like Keats and his concept of "negative capability". The art involves removing what does not belong. It is part of what I liked about Hemingway. At his best, nothing was unneccessary in his prose. I think Cormac McCarthy follows this in his writing.

Of course, once you glean the truth and cut away the chaff, then the appeal of the piece becomes important. The work can be as true and economical as you can get it, but if no one wants to read it, where are you?

That is the part I don't understand. I can make an interesting story. But I also know that sometimes my stories are boring. Are they interesting in the beginning and then pale by the retelling? Or are they boring from the beginning. Not too long ago it occurred to me that it would be difficult to come up with a subject about which no one else had written in the past. It seemed hopeless to try to write a novel or poem because I didn't really seem to have anything new to offer. If that was true, then what was the point of writing in the first place?

I was like John Stuart Mill and his crisis of conscience. As a young man, John Stuart Mill's father was a proponent or Jeremy Bentham. His father tried to mold John's early life in such a way that everything he learned or participated in had a reason that was beneficial to John's growth and education. The only source of sheer pleasure that Mill was given was music. However, Mill came to the realization that the only thing that he enjoyed, music, was limited because there were only a limited number of combinations of notes which could create his source of enjoyment. So for Mill the only source of pleasure he was allowed was limited.

I remember when I first read about this crisis in Mill's life and thinking that he really needed to loosen up. First of all, he might find something else to gain pleasure from; the great cornucopia of writers seemed to be aiming at luring the opposite sex. He might have tried that. He also could have tried the visual arts. But Mill was stuck on music.

Of course, he survived and he went on to write some amazing essays.

Now I wonder about myself. There are times when I wonder if there is a point to this. Why write if I am not going to write anything of any merit? I am hopeful that if I keep at it, my writing will get better and I will write confidently. I am hopeful that something of value lies at the end. We'll see.