The Voice

No, not that crappy reality show, but the elusive tone of a writer’s writing that let’s you immediately identify them. It’s the one thing I’ve been thinking about most over the past hours. When I was in graphics we called it the look and feel. The marketing types refer to it as your “brand”.  The “branding” thing is more about making people into a culture. That’s interesting and all, but the feel of the writing itself is the starting point.

All I know is that it’s a hard thing to find. Surely though, this is it right here, right? This? My words? But no, surely that’s not all. No, it’s my unique style of wit (or lack thereof). It’s what makes me, well, me. It’s my stupid jokes and random references to Swanson’s TV dinners when nothing else will do or the fact that I just have to remember a blurb about Alpha Beta supermarkets RIGHT NOW!

It also happens to be the thing that makes my first book complete crap.

Now, ok, that may be a bit harsh, but the truth is while it may be the first real fluid story that came out of me, the voice telling it is an alien one. There is humor in it, even some of my humor, but by and large it’s a foreign perspective. I don’t know what to do about this. I don’t know if I should pursue it or start fresh with another project that I know is closer to me. Everyone has that first crappy book in them. I’ve gotten mine out. Do I release it into the wind or try to release it into the world? Is it representative enough of me to do so?  It’s certainly got a lot of me in it, but my voice isn’t there (whatever that is!).

I suppose all writers go through that period of discovery where they fumble through this and that. Was there a time when Enya didn’t quite sound like Enya or Springsteen didn’t quite sound like Springsteen? Did anyone other than them hear it? Was there a time when Anne Rice read like someone else or Stephen King? That’s the big question, what to do? I need to hone the skills and sharpen the instrument.

I’ve put a lot of work into the book. I’m proud of it. I  also hate it by now. I’m sick of looking at it. I’m sick of thinking about it. I want to work on it. I want it done with. I want it to be better.  I avoid it. I need to sit down and make myself edit it. It stares back at me like a baby that needs a nappy changing and I, knowing how bad it’s going to be walk by just one more time then run back to it feeling like a neglectful mother. It’s forever revolving. I never have enough time. It’s a horrible feeling, that damned unpublished book…

Either way, I see now just how wrong it is in a bunch of places, how the character who is the main is really just one of many in an ensemble piece, how it may be written in the wrong perspective and how another of my pieces may just be the me that’s dying to get out. I just don’t know if I should move on to that. It smacks of giving up and letting the first kid fall by the wayside. I didn’t make it perfect, no, but that’s all the more reason to give it the attention it deserves.

Damn it, I hate it when I answer my own questions.

It needs attention. It needs to be the best it can be so I know I did it. Period. Then I can make the next one better and more me. Then the next, then the next. The next may have some broad cracking Swanson TV dinner jokes in an Alpha Beta or buying meat lumps. Who knows? The future is work ahead that I hope I don’t hate like I hate this one.

They tell you a lot about writing but hating what you make isn’t part of that pep talk.

Creativity. Check.
Expression. Check.
Inspiration hitting you randomly. Check.
Amusing your friends writing about them. Check.

Hating the hell out of it. Wait..what?

Yeah, let’s see that in the NanoWriMo Pep talk after you’ve finished your fourth revision and you just want to burn the thing. It’s hard. It’s hard to keep sounding like you and not like whatever show was playing behind you when you were typing at 2 am. Just in the interest of being honest, it happens.

So, I’m going to put aside my differences and try to shake hands with the manuscript and try to once again work on it and this time find me in it. That might be what finally makes it not suck. Let’s hope it doesn’t suck! Huzzah!

Day 22: Realization

Pick a random story from your childhood.

The reason I’m picking something not so nice is because a) I tend not to remember the nice things, which is sad, and b) I managed in one fail swoop to accidentally traumatize my son yesterday. I’m not terribly good at sneaking around and he saw a truth that I wish he hadn’t. On the bright side, through his tears he managed to tell me he wouldn’t be needing therapy. I felt bad but it was only a matter of time.

As for me, I have many a traumatic story from my childhood but I’m going for the one that isn’t really that bad. It’s a similar kind of thing.

I don’t remember how old I was, but I imagine I was close to my son’s age. It was Christmas eve and my parents made me go to bed ridiculously early. It was a long time to lay there in the dark thinking.

At some point I remembered that we didn’t leave cookies out for Santa. I heard everyone downstairs playing music and whatnot so I knew Santa hadn’t come yet. I wanted to remind them all before it was too late.

I remembered running down the stairs  past my grandmother in the den who yelled at me not to go into the living room. Adjacent to the living room was the dining room and as I ran to see my grandfather sitting in his chair next to the fireplace, out of the corner of my eye I saw that my parents were hard at work putting together a tall, pink, Barbie dream house.

Instinctively I put my hands over my eyes while frantically trying to tell my grandpa that we needed to put out the cookies.  He assured me that it would be done and to go back to bed. It’s funny but I knew. I knew before I saw it but I pretended that I didn’t and let my mom walk me back up to my bedroom while they finished their stuff.

She tried to grill me on what I’d seen, but I just replied that I saw nothing and kept asking about the cookies and the fireplace. I remember feeling like it was my fault everyone was so unhappy, like my son did last night. He kept asking if it was his fault, like somehow seeing the truth was a bad thing. Did I ruin it? Is it my fault?

I know somehow that no amount of explaining will make a difference except to make sure he knows that it isn’t his fault. He didn’t ruin anything. He’s a little upset today but I’m going to make sure to be as open a possible so he knows it is always ok to seek out the truth and to not feel responsible for ruining anything by doing what he needs to do.

Nothing really changed for me on that night other than I remember it. I’d known, I just hadn’t seen. I think my son is the same. I just hope he feels ok about it eventually.