So much of the writing I do in college or especially in the workplace feels like a concerted effort to remove myself, and sterilize the piece of any trace of authorship (i.e., me). Even at work when I do something as simple as document an action I’ve taken such as calling a client, I will use verbiage such as “outreach was completed”, rather than using the first person “I”.
Sister Molly Heine, in her piece “Finding Your Style and Voice” gives us permission to be present in our writing, even though some venues of academic or professional writing may ask us to strike more of a balance, and even avoid taking on the first person perspective. Heine suggests that even on these occasions, we still live within our writing, and that our style and voice can be discovered through practice.
Heine says finding our style and voice in writing is taking on the task of ‘how’ we write, with regard to our word choice, tone, our individual perspectives applied to our writing, and its cadence.
When I speak, I can observe the little stylistic elements in HOW I talk that is my voice, like the way that I tend to duplicate words to emphasize them. For instance, if I really want to talk about something, I may say “I want to talk talk about it” or if something is scary, I’ll say “it was scary scary”. While these particulars of my speech may not necessarily translate into writing (and in fact, would result in an auto-correct prompt to delete the repeated word), there are particulars that can be discovered and developed in my writing, that is unique to me.
Heine suggests that we discover the “how” we write what we write (our style) through practice and revisions, and from reading the works of other authors. In re-writing, we can get closer to writing what we what want heard. By reading articles and books of other authors, we can hear and recognize their voices, their cadence and vocabulary that makes them unique. And we can use that to inform our own writing, and how we can separate our own writing voices apart from others.
There are endless examples of books that are great not just because the stories, but because the author – the way they write. I recall reading “Once a Runner” by John L. Parker Jr. for the first time, and finding myself so envious of his ability to write. His voice, his flow. He lives in the pages of his writing. I immediately thought of him, because I have re-read chapters of that book to see the way he turns a thought and image into a sentence on a page, to internalize it for my own inspiration in creative writings, despite having wildly different subjects of interest for our work. Then there are authors such as Stephen King, who writes so plainly and can still perfectly depict the curl of a lip in a grin – no frill – and it works and it’s him. You can pick up any of his books, and hear him. That in and of itself is a task, and one that takes work. I also think of fantasy romance writer, Sarah J. Mass, and some of the words and phrases that she uses so frequently, that there are memes (in the most endearing of ways) about her shameless overuse of these expressions, but it is her voice and style.
Now the task ahead is to write and rewrite until I find the words, point of view, and manner of writing that is my own, even in academic and professional venues.
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