I went to Rox’s critique panel yesterday. All of the judges emphasized how no one individual can write a story in the same way another can. Your individual voice is something to be celebrated!
This is absolutely true, Kathryn. I kind of tackled the idea of writing voice, though, in today’s piece in the magazine. It’s important to realize that your individual voice isn’t something you layer onto your story like icing. It’s not a technique. It’s just you talking simply, succinctly, and in straight-forward detail about what you have to say.
You don’t hear individual singers in the choir taking off on wild goose-chases, improvising weird bits to prove they’re different. Everyone does their level best to hit the right notes at the right time in the right key. What’s individual is the unique aspect to those perfect notes that they can’t help coming out of their mouths.
And when all those unique aspects of the same note blend, the note itself becomes something more than it ever was before. Transcendent.
I had a poetry teacher at Cal Poly once who used to send out 200 poems a year and hosted a jazz program on the local radio station. He was talking once about having taught poetry at UC Irvine, and I said, “How could you stand to live there?” He turned and jabbed the air at his temples dramatically, “You transcend it!” he cried out loud. “Transcend!”
Yes,
I went to Rox’s critique panel yesterday. All of the judges emphasized how no one individual can write a story in the same way another can. Your individual voice is something to be celebrated!
K
This is absolutely true, Kathryn. I kind of tackled the idea of writing voice, though, in today’s piece in the magazine. It’s important to realize that your individual voice isn’t something you layer onto your story like icing. It’s not a technique. It’s just you talking simply, succinctly, and in straight-forward detail about what you have to say.
You don’t hear individual singers in the choir taking off on wild goose-chases, improvising weird bits to prove they’re different. Everyone does their level best to hit the right notes at the right time in the right key. What’s individual is the unique aspect to those perfect notes that they can’t help coming out of their mouths.
And when all those unique aspects of the same note blend, the note itself becomes something more than it ever was before. Transcendent.
Transcendent. That’s a beautiful word.
I had a poetry teacher at Cal Poly once who used to send out 200 poems a year and hosted a jazz program on the local radio station. He was talking once about having taught poetry at UC Irvine, and I said, “How could you stand to live there?” He turned and jabbed the air at his temples dramatically, “You transcend it!” he cried out loud. “Transcend!”