Identifiable

You see this picture and instantly your mind leaps to Starbucks. Perhaps your next thoughts are more than just thoughts, they’re your frequent orders. Or associations. Pumpkin spice. Hope my chair is free. Laughing with a friend. God Bless caffeine. You get my point. You see one partial image and your mind goes places.

This happens with books. Without studying the cover, after reading the first few pages, I can often tell if I’ve read another book by the same author. I should partake in one of those blindfold challenges to test this claim. I’m instantly aware if I have a Jodi Picoult book in my hands or a Gillian Flynn. Author of the bestselling YA novel, SPEAK, Laurie Halse Anderson has one of the strongest, most identifiable voices in the industry.

How can I identify an author by only reading a few pages or paragraphs even? Because any author who’s spent time on their craft has cultivated their voice. Before you roll your eyes and get wigged out by a word that feels as definable as supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, take a deep breath. You get more about voice than you give yourself credit for.

Take the Starbucks logo. It’s green and white. There’s a star on top of some wavy-haired mermaid’s head. Crazy recognizable. Even when it’s partially covered. It doesn’t hurt that Starbucks has slowly been planning world domination. (I laugh because when I lived in Seattle there really was a Starbucks on one corner and another directly across the street.)

Author’s leave these kind of hints—these watermarks—in their novels as well. Their words are colored by a specific manner of punctuation and language pattern. Personal experience seeps through each sentence.

I’ve heard mentoring authors coach aspiring writers by telling them to copy a respected author’s voice until they grow comfortable with their own. I’ve never been a huge fan of this advice. Why not? Because I happen to believe a significant piece of finding your voice has to do with an individual’s unique experience. I also think it’s a way to try to hop on a fast track when the real skill of mastering voice comes with time and years of putting in the work. I’d reword this advice instead to encourage writers to read copiously, to study their favorite authors and pay attention to what defines their voice, then to invest the time and energy into getting words down on the page in order to stir the embers of their own voice. There are fires waiting to be stoked.

Here’s a great article on voice I read recently.

+ the answer to who is the Starbucks Siren

Voice Lessons

2016 is the year of the voice. My voice. Choosing to use it. And not to use it.

Every New Year I find I become reflective about what I want to focus on, and as the calendar pushed us into 2016, I kept coming back to voice. Writers love this word. At least I do. There’s this elusive wonder attached to a writer’s voice. I’m reading an author with an extremely strong writing voice right now. I’m halfway through Gillian Flynn’s DARK PLACES. And whether or not you find her stories twisted and her premises disturbing, it would be hard to argue that she lacks voice. There’s no mistaking when I’ve picked up one of her books.

So, yes, obviously I want to continue to strengthen my writing voice.

But…

I’m also going to be intentional about something else voice-related.

When not to use my voice.

In this era of share-all to be-all, I’ve grown quiet fascinated with getting quieter. Studying some of my wisest mentors and people who’ve earned my respect, I tend to notice a familiar thread. They don’t share every little opinion. They don’t always feel they need to argue. They aren’t fighting to be heard.

Because they’re focusing on something revolutionary. My mentors concentrate on listening, and they know how to discern whether what they choose to share will bring value to a moment or just muddy it up.

The world is already mud-saturated. And I happen to believe all of the oversharing contributes to many things we haven’t even felt the repercussions of yet. Like entitlement, the false ideology we are always in the know or that we’re always right. I think it invites stress and prompts unnecessary arguments. It makes some appear foolish, desperate, and in love with shock value. It offers the false assumption words are enough when action is far better.

Hear me clearly on this. There is a time and place to rise up, to let my words and my views find their way out in the world. But there’s much to be said about taking a moment to ascertain when I’ve encounter that time and that place.

Until then, I’ll be observing all of it. And making up my own mind.