One Writer's Process: Deborah Underwood

Writing is Hard

I wrote a picture book last year. Revised, revised, had some interest, revised, revised, got to a point where it felt better, but now am at a point where to go forward I would need to revise again, and maybe remove some of what I thought the story was about (although exactly what it is about has remained elusive, even to me).

Have you ever had a fallen soufflé story? One where you've messed with it so much you're completely lost and don't even know which way is up anymore? I've set this aside for a bit, but came back to it yesterday and am just as confused and unconvinced. The revision suggestions make good sense, but I'm not sure I feel they're right for me. But I know the story could be stronger, and I want it to be as strong as it can be. Unless I want to just leave it behind and move on, which is another possibility.

I may just do a quick draft to see if the changes feel off once they're incorporated, but I'm dragging my heels even at that. I don't mind editing; I actually like it. But I really don't like looking around and saying, "What even IS this mess? And should I find an escape hatch and go write something totally new?" It's like I've entered some weird magnetic anomaly where the compass is spinning around wildly and can't be trusted.

In contrast, I had to write a synopsis of a recent work yesterday. I love this story. Self-doubt is my constant companion (for most all writers, maybe?), but this story makes me laugh every time I read it. It's funny, I love the voice, and the plot works exactly the way it should. It reads as if it poured from the assured pen of a skilled writer who doesn't question her ability or experience at all.

Being a writer is dancing between these two opposites, and boy, it can mess with your head.

Coffee will help though, right?

Deborah Underwood’s most recent release, Bearplane, illustrated by Sam Wedelich, came out last month, and Walter Had A Best Friend, illustrated by Sergio Ruzzier, is coming out this fall. She’s written for young readers as well as for older readers, including Every Little Letter, The Panda Problem, Interstellar Cinderella, and The New York Times bestsellers The Quiet Book, The Loud Book, and Here Comes the Easter Cat. (And that doesn’t include the 28 nonfiction books that she’s written for kids.) If you’d like to learn more about her and her work, visit her website: https://www.deborahunderwoodbooks.com/index.html

Editors note: Deborah shared these observations on writing with her Facebook followers and kindly granted Wordswimmer permission to reprint her words here. If you’d like to follow her on Facebook, check out her FB page: https://www.facebook.com/deborahunderwood. Thanks, Deborah!

On Texture

I’m reading two memoirs—one about the daughter of a Mexican immigrant to the US, the other about the daughter of a Korean immigrant—and both deal with the pain and frustration of being outsiders, outcasts in a culture that doesn’t “see” them, a society which doesn’t allow them full access to its riches or its opportunities. 

In a way they’re the same story of the immigrant experience. But since two different people from two very different cultures and backgrounds are telling these stories, there are some subtle (and not so subtle) differences.

Listen to Cathy Park Hong in Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning describe her father:

On paper, my father is the so-called model immigrant. Upon meeting him, strangers have called my father a gentleman for his quiet charisma and kindness, a personality he cultivated from years of selling life insurance and dry-cleaning supplies to Americans of all manner of race and class. But like many model immigrants, he can be angry.

Hong describes her father as “highly sensitive about his own racial identity to the point where everything came down to race.”

Here, listen again to Hong:

If we were waiting for a table, and someone was seated before us, he pointed out that it was because we were Asian. If he was seated way in the back of the plane, he said it was because he was Asian. When my parents moved me into my dorm room during the first week at Oberlin in Ohio, my father shook my roommate’s father’s hand, who then asked him where he was from. When my father said South Korea, my roommate’s father eagerly replied that he fought in the Korean War.

 

My father smiled tightly and said nothing.

Now listen to Maria Hinojosa writing in her memoir, Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America, about her father:

Once Raúl got to the Brownsville bus stop he immediately boarded and off they went on the flat, brown roads of southern Texas. Dad had never traveled this way in the US and had never traveled through Texas by land, so he was at first excited to see the landscape, but then bored by the sameness of the view outside his window. Hours later the bus made its first stop on the US side of the border, still in Texas. When Raúl got off and made his way to the bathroom off to the side of the gray gas pumps, he was suddenly confronted with the original sin of this country.

In the back of the small station there were two bathroom doors, but it wasn’t one for men and one for women. Here, above each rickety door, was a sign painted on a wooden panel hanging by a rusty nail. One sign said WHITE. The other said COLORED.

Raúl sighed. Was he white or colored? And if he wasn’t one or the other did he even exist in this country?

The question humiliated and disgusted him.

In both examples you can “hear” and “feel” the texture of the language. Some might call it the voice of each writer, how each writer, just as each person, sounds different and speaks with a different voice unique to that person. And it is voice. But it’s the texture of their voices, the way it feels to read the words each writer puts on the page, that strikes me as so different—not because the authors have had different experiences or view those experiences through different lenses (Mexican, Korean), but because the words they choose, the way each writer arranges the words on the page (with Spanish scatted throughout or a Korean word appearing on the page) gives each story a different feel.

It’s like touching different fabric. Silk feels different from wool, and both feel different from cotton or nylon. Some fabric feels smooth, other fabric rough. It’s the same with language, as if the writer is knitting a story, and the fabric of the story is what the reader can feel, can touch—though we don’t really touch it, we “hear” the texture—if you can think of it this way—in our inner ear, the space where our senses absorb words, where language has the power to spark and touch us, where we “feel” the emotional impact of the words a writer chooses to put on the page the same way a weaver or knitter chooses which pattern to use.

Texture conveys the heart of the writer. It lets you feel the words flowing from the writer’s heart to yours. It lets you wrap yourself in words the way you might wrap yourself in a blanket to feel its warmth, to hold someone else in your arms, to lose yourself inside another person’s way of being in the world.

I’m not sure texture is something you think about as you write any more than you can think about voice. It’s part of you, like a fingerprint, and it identifies you as you each time you set words on paper, each time you choose a word and place that word in a sentence... the way only you can place it.

If you’re interested in reading more about Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, visit: 

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605371/minor-feelings-by-cathy-park-hong/

https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/minor-feelings-and-the-possibilities-of-asian-american-identity

https://www.lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-are-you-pissed-on-cathy-park-hongs-minor-feelings-an-asian-american-reckoning/

And if you’d like to read more about Maria Hinojosa’s Once I Was You, visit: 

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Once-I-Was-You/Maria-Hinojosa/9781982128654

https://www.shondaland.com/inspire/books/a34305279/maria-hinojosa-once-i-was-you/

https://bookpage.com/reviews/25444-maria-hinojosa-once-i-was-you-nonfiction#.YN8jPC1h2CQ

Learning How to Listen

Open a novel, start reading a poem, or begin a short story, and you’ll hear a writer’s voice immediately.

Each voice is distinct, the author’s voice melded with the narrator’s voice into something never heard before, offering us an invitation into a secret world, an inner world ordinarily hidden from view. It’s this intimacy that we expect as readers. 

But often as writers we take our voices and this intimacy on the page for granted, believing (mistakenly) that our voices—our writer’s voice and our narrator’s voice— are granted us automatically rather than something we need to labor to achieve. 

Using our voice is a skill that we need to learn. It takes a good deal of effort, as you know, to replicate the sound of our voice on the page and in the reader’s ear. For many of us it can take years to find our narrator’s voice before it sounds authentic in our ear, as well as on the page.

How does a writer find his or her voice? What sort of exercises, if any, are helpful? What’s the secret to capturing the sound of a narrator’s voice? 

Lately, I’ve been asking myself these questions because of a severe case of  laryngitis that I came down with six months ago. And I've been wondering if understanding how our speaking voices work can help us understand how to better work with our writer’s voices. 

I hadn’t given much attention to my speaking voice until I lost it last June. Whenever I spoke to people face-to-face or over the phone, I expected my voice to sound as it always sounded. It was my voice, after all, and my voice had a certain sound, a certain timbre, shall we say, as well as a certain cadence and volume. Much like a fingerprint, it identified me to all who knew me. 

But suddenly my voice was gone, and over the next few months doctors told me to rest my voice, which was harder than it might sound. I didn’t realize how much I used my voice. But, my goodness, I discovered I used my voice a lot more than I’d thought. And resting my voice—which meant, essentially, not speaking—was a challenge.

After a while my ENT doctor suggested I take speech therapy to help rehabilitate my voice. He thought therapy might help strengthen the muscles around my strained vocal cords and, in turn, improve my voice. So I started speech therapy sessions, and what I learned about my speaking voice might, I think, help other writers find their writing voices, as well as the voices of their narrators.

1) Learn to relax.

It was almost the first thing that I was advised. Relax! I was given exercises to help me learn to relax my neck and throat, to rid the muscles of tension. In the process of relaxing I learned that forcing myself to speak would only strain the cords and give my voice an unnaturally tense sound. I think it’s the same with writing. Tension will change your voice and how you sound on the page. So, first, try to relax.

2) Warm up.

I had to learn how to physically warm up my voice before speaking. This meant I had to repeat vowel sounds, lift my shoulders in slow circles, massage my jaw. At the start of some sessions I was given a warm towel to wrap around my neck for a few minutes so the heat could help soften the muscles and ligaments in my throat. I was literally warming up my voice to speak before I uttered a word.

And it may be the same for writing. Before you begin writing, you might try some form of physical exercise to help you warm up your writing muscles. What if you spent ten minutes reading someone else’s words (or listening to their voice). Or what if you devoted a few minutes to drawing or doodling? You might be surprised how warming up your hand muscles also warms up your voice muscles. 

3) Reduce the strain.

I had to learn how to project my voice from the front of my mouth in order to reduce the strain on the back of my throat. That meant using lots of words that began with ‘m’… and feeling a kind of buzz on my lips… and making sure that I was using my diaphragm to speak instead of forcing air through my vocal chords and straining to speak from my throat instead of from my belly or core. 

So, if you’re having trouble hearing your voice or your narrator’s voice on the page, or if you feel like the voice doesn’t sound authentic, you might consider changing something about the way you write—the time of day, for instance, or the chair you sit in, or the location of your desk. Or try a new pen.  Or a new journal. 

What if you went to a cafe to write? Or to a bus station? Or to a park? Or just switched rooms? Would your voice sound different if you wrote something there? Maybe that’s something to explore: can the place where you write influence your voice?

4) Learn how to listen. 

After six weeks in speech therapy, I was given another test to see how my voice sounded… and the printout showed me what my ear told me. I could hear a difference between when I’d first started therapy and six weeks later. 

This, too, offers a clue to how we can find our voices on the page. We need to learn how to listen for our voice, and to recognize it when we hear it so that we can reproduce it again and again. That’s why sometimes it can be helpful to read one’s work aloud, or to listen to someone else—a trusted friend, a helpful colleague—read one’s work so we can hear our voice as it sounds on the page.

After six months I’m lucky that I have regained a good deal of my voice. Although not all of it has returned, enough has come back so that I sound almost like I remember sounding. It’s my speaking voice, just not quite my voice! That means there’s still more work to do and more exams to determine if the vocal cords have healed yet.

But I’ve learned a lot that I hadn’t known about my voice. (Did you know, for instance, the human vocal cord is a half-inch to an inch long?) And in the process I learned a lot about my writing voice, too.

May the pages that you write in the days ahead be filled with the magical sound of your voice.

Many thanks to all for following wordswimmer over the past year. I’m looking forward to spending more time with you in the year ahead. Happy writing in 2019!!

On the Edge of Becoming

Sunday morning sunrise

and the world awakens again,

the silence broken only by

the sound of your pen

scratching the surface

of the page.

It's the same each morning.

You don’t know what

your voice sounds like

until you take the risk

of opening your mouth

and letting the words

tumble out, half-formed,

until you let your pen

begin moving across the page,

to see what will flow,

not knowing what

you have to say

until you read the words

that appear beneath

your pen as it moves

across the page.

What can you say

about something so mysterious

as voice? Some people

think you can find it

if you devote the time

to search for it as if

it’s outside you like

hidden treasure or

an unmapped island, and

all you have to do is keep searching

and like an explorer (before satellites

and GPS) you'll stumble

upon it, if you're lucky.

But what if it’s not something

that exists outside you or

that you have to search for,

but, instead, is part of your body,

just like an arm or leg

or like your eyes or ears,

and it’s just a question

of listening intently and

letting it speak and being able

to acknowledge its presence,

like your heart or soul, a part of

your body that you become aware 

of when you pay close attention 

to your pulse, the way you pay 

close attention to your hopes

and dreams?

You find your voice, I think, only

when you stop searching for it,

when you step off the boat and

put down your pack and sit

and wait for it to emerge

on the page in front of you.

Open your ears and listen

to the silence for in the silence 

is your voice, your words

waiting to be spoken,

your stories or poems balanced

on the edge of becoming,

waiting to emerge.

Weaving Magic

Have you noticed how the voices of Southern writers weave a kind of magic spell over readers?

You can feel that magic throughout the pages of Augusta Scattergood's first novel, Glory Be, as she weaves her spell with the sweet sounds of a Southern dialect, an unerring eye for details, and heartfelt compassion for her main character, Gloriana June Hemphill, who is struggling to learn how to be true to herself in a world that seems to be changing so fast that the truth is sometimes difficult to discern.

The story is set in Hanging Moss, Mississippi during the summer of 1964. Every year Glory celebrates her birthday on July 4th with a party at the public pool, but this summer the pool has been shut down to avoid integration.

Not only does her friend Frankie betray her, but her older sister, Jesslyn, is no longer her best friend now that she’s discovered boys, and Glory's new friendship with a girl from Ohio places Glory under suspicion that she’s helping the troublemakers from up north.

These are just some of the challenges that propel the plot as Glory tries to figure out a way to re-open the pool so she can celebrate her birthday as she always has in the past. But the present, she realizes, is changing, and she has to decide how she feels about the changes as her birthday approaches and the story unfolds.

Here’s an example of Scattergood's magical voice from the book's opening page:

Franklin Cletus Smith has been my best friend since we hunted doodlebugs together in my backyard. Some people call him Frankfurter ‘cause he’s got hair the color of a hot dog. I call him Frankie. I squinted down the sidewalk, and finally here he came, dragging his towel with his bathing suit hiked way up.

"It’s a million degrees out here. I’ve been waiting forever."

“Well, hey to you, too, Glory,” he said.

There’s an assurance to this voice, a deep knowing which this voice conveys to the reader. It's a voice that belongs to a tradition of Southern voices, and you can sense the assurance and confidence of this voice right from the start of the story.

Part of what gives this voice its Southern charm and magic, I think, are words like “doodlebugs” and “hair the color of a hot dog,” and the way Glory describes the day (“It’s a million degrees out here. I’ve been waiting forever.”) and the way Frankie responds (“Well, hey to you, too, Glory.”). The phrasing, the way Glory shares her life with the reader, is what sets the reader firmly inside Glory's world and heart.

Here's another sample:

After supper, Laura and me sat on the back steps listening to the crickets start up. You could about catch a lightning bug by holding your hand out. Before we knew it, we were slapping mosquitoes and I had to turn on the stoop light to see real good.

And one more:

I took a deep breath, smelling the chlorine and the coconut suntan lotion, trying to remember hot dogs frying on the snack bar grill, and the lifeguards' whistles. I stood between Jesslyn and Laura with the warm sunshine beating down on my neck.

"You remember last July Fourth?" I asked Jesslyn. "The watermelon race? Me and you and Frankie and our cousins at my birthday party? And that cake you and Emma made me, shaped like a cat? Remember?" They weren't really questions I was asking Jesslyn. I just needed us to remember.

"I'm sorry, Glory," Laura said.

"I don't think the Pool Committee's worried about your birthday" was all Jesslyn said.

Here I was, sure that one little part of this town had changed. That maybe people like Frankie's daddy finally got together to decide opening the pool up for everybody, just in time for a Fourth of July celebration, was the kind of thing you should do on our country's birthday. But I was wrong. My thinking was all mixed up.

In the Author’s Note that you'll find at the end of the story, Scattergood writes:

There’s a saying that “Mississippi grows storytellers.” I was raised with stories told around the Sunday dinner table. Most nights, my grandmother dreamed up new bedtime tales for us. English teachers and librarians introduced me to the very high bar set by my state’s great literary heritage. Since I was old enough to listen, I’ve been hearing Mississippi in my head. This is one story I needed to share.

Thanks to Scattergood’s gift, we can hear Mississippi in our head, too.

For more information about Glory Be, visit: http://www.augustascattergood.com/books/bk_glory.html

And for more info on Augusta Scattergood, visit her website: http://www.augustascattergood.com/

and her blog: http://ascattergood.blogspot.com/

.

Exploring Voice

Thirteen-year-old Josh Greenwood, the main character in Shelley Pearsall’s new novel, All Shook Up, has a problem.

His grandmother is ill, and his mother flies off to Florida to take care of her, shipping Josh from Boston to Chicago, where his father lives and where Josh definitely does not want to be, especially after he discovers his father doing Elvis impersonations in order to make a living after losing his job at a shoe store.

How is Josh supposed to show his face in his new school if the other students ever find out his father's making a fool of himself?

Here’s Josh trying to explain, mid-way through the story, how he feels to his father:

After that, my voice began to grow less sorry and more angry. It was like another thirteen-year-old suddenly took over my body: Josh Greenwood, Now Being Played by His Evil Twin. “Everybody thinks I can handle anything. No problem–send Josh to a new city or a new school or whatever, he’ll be fine, right?”

My voice rushed on, gathering steam. “Then, just when he’s starting to fit in with people and he’s made, like, two or three friends...why not have his dad go ahead and screw it all up? Because Josh can handle anything, right? Don’t even bother asking Josh his opinion– ”

“What?” my dad interrupted, sounding completely surprised and confused. “What have I messed up? Tell me.”

This was the point when one of those possessed, forced laughs came out. “Jeez, Dad, how can you not see it?” My voice rose, sounding embarrassingly like a girl’s at one point. “Walking around pretending you’re Elvis and buying thousand-dollar costumes–that’s normal? And then you go and sign up to be Elvis at my school? I mean, what do you think I’d be upset about?”

How does Pearsall use voice to draw readers into Josh's world?

First, there’s the voice of the narrator. It’s Josh’s voice, describing how he feels about his own voice, which is an interesting way to reveal character. As a result, we get an insider's view of the picture, hearing his voice the way he hears it.

Hearing that voice, that interior voice, lets us know Josh on a deeper level. It's what gives us a clearer understanding of Josh's emotional state, which isn't just anger, it's more than anger, as if “another thirteen year old suddenly took over my body: Josh Greenwood, Now Being Played by His Evil Twin.”

This layer adds a new perspective and lets us see Josh viewing his life as if it's a horror movie. It's the perfect way to draw a reader deeper into Josh's emotional vortex because it depicts exactly how Josh feels at this point–as if he actually is playing the lead role in a horror movie.

Then we get the chance to hear not only Josh’s interior voice but his actual voice so that we can evaluate the anger for ourselves. Once Josh's voice appears in quotes on the page, we know not just what’s going on inside him and how he hears himself, but how he sounds to the rest of the world and to his dad in particular.

“Everybody thinks I can handle anything. No problem–send Josh to a new city or a new school or whatever, he’ll be fine, right?”

The sarcasm, tinged with anger and blame, comes from Josh's desire to make sure his father understands just the opposite of what he’s saying: maybe he can’t handle anything, and everybody’s wrong; he isn’t fine.

Notice how in the second paragraph his voice rushes on because he can’t control the anger that’s bubbling up inside him. He's been left out of the decision-making process. It’s his life. Shouldn't he have been included? Instead, he has to put up with his mom and dad shaking up his life.

What does Josh want? He wants to live a normal life, the same as everyone else, which is to say, ordinary and under the radar, where most teens his age prefer to live.

Yet Dad’s totally clueless, unsure what he’s done wrong, unable to see the problem that Josh has with him dressing up as Elvis. For Dad, impersonating Elvis is simply a way to make a living, and, surprisingly, he enjoys it.

But it's precisely Dad’s blindness that causes Josh’s anger to boil over. His voice rises until it sounds almost like a girl’s as he attempts to explain the situation to his dad in the most sarcastic tone possible, assigning blame even as he begs for sympathy, and posing the ultimate in sarcastic questions: what do you think I’d be upset about?

What’s wonderful about the way Pearsall uses voice in this excerpt and throughout the book is how she shows us a character from the inside–using voice intonations, interior thoughts, self reflection–as well from the outside as other characters see and hear him.

By constantly shifting the camera’s eye so that first it’s inside Josh, then outside him, always pointing to something else, revealing something the reader hasn’t yet seen, Pearsall is able to bring her character to life in the reader's mind.

The next time that you’re working on a story and struggling with a character, listen closely to his or her voice... and see if you can record not only how the voice sounds to other characters but how that voice sounds inside the head of your character.

Imagine a video camera trained on your character. You’re the director behind the camera. What do you see and hear?

Now imagine the camera inside your character . (You’re still behind the camera, seeing and hearing everything through its lens). What do you see and hear now?

If you have a moment or two, share what you discover with us at Wordswimmer.

For more on voice and character development, take a look at:

http://character-development.suite101.com/article.cfm/character_voice_writing_exercise
http://writers-in-progress.deviantart.com/journal/16028617/
http://moviepals.org/blog/screenwriting-tips-and-tricks-character-development/
http://character-development.suite101.com/article.cfm/using_dialect_in_fiction
http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2008/07/dont-mistake-voice-for-character.html

For more on Shelley Pearsall and her work, visit: http://www.shelleypearsall.com/

And for more on All Shook Up, visit: http://www.shelleypearsall.com/allShookUp.htm

Thaisa Frank: On Writing to Strangers

Thaisa Frank, the author of three collections of short stories, is the co-author with Dorothy Wall of Finding Your Writer's Voice. She has won two PEN awards for her stories, has a new story coming out in an anthology with Bloomsbury Press (edited by Ellen Sussman) in May, 2008, and teaches part-time at the University of San Francisco.

A few weeks ago, she was kind enough to share a few thoughts with Wordswimmer’s readers in response to a post on finding one's voice (http://wordswimmer.blogspot.com/2008/02/notes-on-finding-your-voice.html).

Since then she's given further consideration to the question of how to find one's voice... and offers the thoughts below as a way of helping writers explore the issue in greater depth.

Thanks for your generosity, Thaisa!

* * * * *

These thoughts were partly triggered by something Bruce wrote in his blog--which I think a lot of writers feel:

… It's very hard--and counter-intuitive to a great extent--to express yourself intimately to someone who you've never met.

I'm going to make a somewhat radical proposition:

Writing to a stranger makes it easier to create a poem or story that feels complete to the writer and comes alive in the imagination of other people.

This proposition flies in the face of two beloved ideas about writing. First: if you're stuck, it helps to visualize a friend you can talk to. Second: You'll do best just writing for yourself.

These ideas contain important ingredients. Unless you've gotten a contract, you should never write a first draft thinking about the market or someone else's opinion. Also, in terms of audience, you should always write with a sense of basic safety--even though you may take risks that will make some readers uncomfortable. (Being intimate doesn't mean you can't disturb or even shock.)

But if you don't take the stranger into account and think of voice as a vehicle for connecting with someone who doesn't know you, you'll rarely create a story with universal resonance. It will also be harder to achieve the special intimacy that can happen between a reader and a writer. Except for a couple of lucky accidents, you're usually left with nothing more than a few powerful passages, well-written fragments, and anecdotes that people who know you will appreciate.

Writing to a stranger, however, helps create a story and a world because anonymity frees the writer to say almost anything and also forces the writer to find universal elements in the work--i.e. things that a stranger can relate to and recreate in their imagination.

Even though at first these elements may seem trivial to the writer--things they're grabbing at so someone who doesn't share the experience can translate--they almost always lead to significant events and images that help the story blossom into a concrete world, larger than the sum of its parts. These elements also encourage a narrative arc. By narrative arc, I mean a piece that feels whole, has unity, momentum, and leaves the reader with the sense of having gone on a journey--the sense that something happened.

Without question, there are certain strangers who are very hard to write or talk to. There's the government official one has written to three times about a visa. And the intimidating editor who's asked for revisions. These strangers usually belong to a category of people we actually experienced--the frightening grown-ups of childhood. They remain in our imaginations as static entities. (Sometimes it's helpful to exorcise them by making them into characters.)

The reader, however, is a special kind of stranger--a fellow traveler who is giving you the gift of time. This stranger wants to escape and be entertained but also wants to accompany an astute observer who will be honest about some aspect of life--often more honest than people around them. Even when we consider Kafka (the creator of the first known fairy tales of modern life) whose characters spoke endlessly (and fruitlessly) to intimidating strangers, his own voice was the voice of a vulnerable stranger reaching out to readers.

It's not an accident that there are so many stories about travelers who have heard--or who tell--amazing things to people they just met and will never see again. Most of us have had these experiences in colloquial settings--usually slightly urgent and surreal situations where there's a sudden common bond and a high guarantee of future anonymity. It's happened to me when a subway stalls, or people are milling the streets during a blackout. We usually talk about the immediate situation, then about mundane parts of our lives. The longer the situation lasts, the more likely we are to tell an intimate story.

These anonymous situations create strange confessional booths. They exist with a sense of dislocation and are populated by strangers who are trustworthy precisely because we won't ever see them again.

I hope I've made the argument that it's common and not at all illegal to have intimate conversations with strangers. The same principle applies to writing. If you are writing a story or a poem with a stranger in mind, it increases your range of intimacy and freedom.

However, the writer faces a challenge that strangers in a blackout or a stalled subway don't face: the situation doesn't begin with a common bond. The fact that the reader has bought the book or read the first sentence is a fragile connection. And the story is the only interface--a little like a floating screen that can intrigue, compel or baffle the reader.

To create a common bond, the writer must write to the reader as one would write a letter, and not for the reader, as one would write a paper in school. The writer must also be able to step back, and, at times, write from a distance, yet with the intention of wanting connection.

This is a special sort of connection. From the beginning of time, writers have forged a singular language of intimacy, much of which is nurtured by the fact that writing involves the meeting of two strangers.

As a corollary, then, I want to make another radical proposition: Writing to a stranger creates a special form of intimacy.

The writer is forced to create this intimacy precisely because the writer knows language is the only vehicle for connection and this language will reach a stranger in an unknown time and space. This means writers must be determined to connect and imbue their words with a power and a vector that will come alive in the imagination of a stranger. (One might say that prose and poetry exist in a renegade time and space, away from immediate public exposure.) The privacy of this meeting between the writer and the reader means the writer is free to show parts of lives that people rarely reveal, like loneliness, family secrets, leave takings, astounding reunions. In this sense alone, fictional and poetic forms are singular vehicles for revealing strict confidences.

But unless writers also use themselves, these confidences will be sterile and non-intimate. To use oneself means writers must work from extreme levels of vulnerability and honesty, even if they are writing things that couldn't possibly have happened to them. (Indeed, confessional writing that doesn't strive to connect can make readers feel quite isolated.) Perhaps the easiest way to understand using oneself is in terms of voice--who you are, how you express that artistically and how you strive to connect.

Every writer's voice is unique as a thumb-print. It often begins with a primitive sense of story, a first draft meant only for oneself. As the story grows, voice can disappear, and the story itself becomes an intimate communication to a reader.

When such intimacy occurs, both readers and writers experience extraordinary moments of connection. I know things about writers they'd never tell me in a conversation. And I realize readers know things about me that I'd never tell friends.

Feeling comfortable about writing to a stranger can open a lot of doors. The case for writing to the stranger, greatly simplified, can be turned into the following formula:

Writing to the stranger = increase in freedom of voice + increase in necessity for universal elements + increase in intimate conversation + increase in probability of a strong narrative arc.

There are thousands of strangers. And since they appear to us in so many different places and so many different ways, writers must find their own. Here are some questions that may help you find the stranger who is your best reader:

Where will we talk?

A bar?

A blackout?

A train?

An unfamiliar city?

Will we be in hiding?

Will we make love?

These questions are just the beginning. You'll ask many others. Or a stranger may ask one for you.

If you'd like to learn more about Thaisa Frank and her work, visit her website:
http://www.thaisafrank.com/index.htm

Notes on Finding Your Voice

"It would take a whole book to chart the brilliant deviations the voice can take to prevent its owner from being known."--Iris Warren, voice teacher (from Finding Your Writer' s Voice by Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall)

When I use my voice to speak, I'm engaging in a different process than the one required to "hear" my voice inside my head as I write words on paper.

As I speak, I need to think about how my voice sounds, and whether I'm speaking loudly enough to be heard, and what the tone is, and whether the people (or person) to whom I'm speaking can hear me, and, more importantly, if they can understand the words coming from my mouth.

At the same time, I'm interpreting their glances, and how they roll their eyes, and if they're frowning or smiling, and I'll adjust my voice, as well as edit what I say, depending on the response that my voice evokes in my listener.

All this... (whew!) ... just to speak and be heard.

But when I'm writing, it's just me--and the pen and paper--listening to what I'm thinking.

Yes, the paper may be too rough or too bright, the flow of ink too fast or too faint, or the pencil may break, or I can't write fast enough, or I have to stop and think.

Even so, it's just me and the page, and the process is entirely different than speaking to someone.

When we write for a reader, though, we find ourselves caught somewhere between these two extremes.

We may not be speaking to a listener face-to-face, but we are writing to someone other than ourselves.

And this seemingly slight variation can change the way we think, and the way we hear what we're saying, and the way that we put words on paper.

How does making this kind of distinction help us find our true voice?

Well, the very act of writing... of hearing oneself think aloud on paper...can help a writer begin to detect differences in his or her voice.

Is it the voice you'd use in public or private?

Is it the voice you'd share with a trusted friend or a new colleague, an elderly parent or a teenage child?

We use so many different voices during the day. But which one is our true voice, the one which reveals the deepest core of our being and lets others see inside us and feel that core along with us?

"Writers, like singers, are often nervous performers," write Thaisa Frank and Dorothy Wall in their remarkable book, Finding Your Writer's Voice. "Relying too heavily on technique, or craft, is just one of the many intricate ways writers disguise themselves from themselves, and from the world."

To find your true voice, you need to be willing to drop the disguises. But to do this, you first need to recognize the many disguises that you use during the course of your day to hide your true voice.

You can explore your various voices through writing. From this exploration you can learn to recognize the disguises that hide your true voice as well as begin to "hear" a voice that's unguarded, a voice that has no protective cloak hiding it.

"A whole cast of other imposter voices waits in the wings to step in when the writer is feeling uncomfortable," write Frank and Wall. "The academic voice, the psychological voice, the literary voice. The voice of abstraction and analysis, the overly logical voice, the polite voice. You write 'His words set off defensive signals in my mind' instead of 'I was furious.'"

Being able to distinguish the difference between your true voice and the voice of the imposter is essential if a writer wants to find his or her true voice.

In the end, it's only by writing, and then by writing more and more, that one's true voice begins to emerge on the page.

When it does emerge, it appears as if by magic, and looks effortless to achieve.

But, really, it may have taken a writer years of searching-- and careful listening-- to find.

For more thoughts on finding your voice, visit these sites:
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/spring96/philbrick.html
http://www.write101.com/lethamfind.htm
http://www.storycenter.org/canada/voice.html
http://www.efuse.com/Design/wa-voice.html

For information about Thaisa Frank (and a handful of interviews with her in the "Links" section of her website), visit: http://www.thaisafrank.com/

And for information about Dorothy Wall and her work, visit: http://www.dorothywall.com/

Beach Talk: Finding Your Character's Voice

Come spread a blanket and join us on the beach.

Crissa-Jean Chappell, whose first novel, Total Constant Order, relies on the main character's voice for much of its emotional power, stopped by Wordswimmer to chat this week.

You'll have to wait until October, when her book is scheduled for publication, to hear the stream-of-consciousness voice of Fin (Frances Isabelle Nash), the sympathetic protagonist of Chappell's novel who struggles with OCD (Obsessive Compulsion Disorder) and a voice inside her head that's always counting.

But, for now, imagine a fifteen-year-old girl's voice containing the coming-of-age angst of Holden Caulfield, the frenetic desperation of Joey Pigza, and the hipster wisdom of Weetzie Bat.

How did Chappell, who teaches creative writing in Miami, find Fin's voice? And then, even more miraculously, how did she manage to bring Fin's voice to the page?

Here are a few tips that Chappell was kind enough to share with Wordswimmer while we were chatting on the beach.

Wordswimmer: Do you remember how you found Fin's voice?

Chappell: I used to believe that plot and character were two different things. It took me a while before I learned that they are the same. Fin’s voice grew out of her struggle with OCD. Everything that a character does (and says) must revolve around her (or his) conflict.

Wordswimmer: What was it about her voice that made you sit up and take notice?

Chappell: Fin is a character I can relate to. When I was her age, I shared many of the same anxieties. Often, I felt like the invisible girl at school, watching everyone like a spy from another planet.

Wordswimmer: Did you trust her voice immediately?

Chappell: Fin says things that I wouldn’t dare to say out loud. Sometimes she even frightens me. She tells it like it is. In the process of writing this book, I would often stop and think, “Is this too much?” That’s the left brain talking. And I would take it as a sign to keep going.

Wordswimmer: How did you manage to get her voice down on paper?

Chappell: I like to listen to people and write down what they say. I always carry a notebook in my purse and it’s brimming with fragments of conversation. (Of course, my job as a professor comes in handy for eavesdropping).

Wordswimmer: Was it difficult to write about Fin and OCD?

Chappell: Once I decided to write about OCD, Fin’s voice was easy to find. She’s the girl in the front row who doesn’t say much, who spends a lot of time drawing in class, who notices things that the other kids ignore.

Wordswimmer: Did it take a long time to get the voice on paper?

Chappel: I wrote the novel in nine months. I showed it to another YA writer, Joyce Sweeney, and we polished it before submitting to my agent, Kate Lee, who offered her own wise suggestions. My editors at HarperCollins, Katherine Tegan and Julie Lansky, were very protective of Fin. They never asked me to make changes that would feel out of character for her.

Wordswimmer: Any suggestions for writers searching for the voices of their characters?

Chappell: It’s important to be a good listener. By that, I mean, pay attention to your protagonist. Don’t simply move her through the plot like a chess piece on a board. She might do things that surprise you. When that happens, let her. That’s when it gets good.

Wordswimmer: How do you help your students find their voices?

Chappell: When I teach a writing class, I walk into the room on the first day and jot a sentence on the board: “Screw the left brain.” (The quote's taken from a note that supposedly hangs over Ray Bradbury’s computer and refers to the critical/analytical section of our brains devoted to self-censorship.)

As a professor working in a college devoted to the arts, I understand that most of my students are visually oriented. To make matters more complicated, many were born in other countries. They come to class with a lot of “baggage.” Somebody may have told them, “You’re a terrible writer,” and now they believe it.

To be honest, anybody can learn to write well. I can teach them a variety of tricks to strengthen their skills. However, voice is something that can’t be taught. I can only coax them into expressing themselves as candidly as possible, making every noun and verb count, rather than hiding behind a bunch of flabby adjectives.

A friend of mine writes letters so lush with detail, they remind me of short stories. Yet when he attempts to write fiction, he gets bogged down by some preconceived notion of what “good prose” should be. His stories sound nothing like his letters.

I see the same struggle in my students.They’re afraid of making mistakes. They don’t want to look stupid.

I tell them, “This isn’t about spelling. I don’t care if your grammar is funky. Just write. You can clean it up later.”

At first, they’re overwhelmed by the freedom. They want to know, “How long does it have to be?”

I tell them, “Until it’s done.”

They want to fill up space with long, rambly sentences and abstract ideas.

I tell them, “Imagine you’re paying me a buck for every word. Now go back and trim it. Save yourself some cash.”

Because they are young, they often believe that they have nothing important to say.

I try to teach them that their voice matters.

Every story has been told. It’s their view of the world that gives meaning to their narratives. That’s why my nonfiction classes usually impress me more than those in creative writing. There’s no B.S. when my students write honestly about their lives.

If it scares you, good. Go further.

If you think you’ve pushed too far, push harder.

Once you let go of that built-in anxiety, it’s like Dumbo’s magic feather.

You can fly.

Wordswimmer: Many thanks, Crissa.

For more information about Crissa-Jean Chappell and her work, visit her website at: http://www.crissajeanchappell.com/

And keep an eye out for Total Constant Order, which is due out in October from Katherine Tegan Books (an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers).