Listening To My Own Voice

This summer, at the Skidmore Writer’s Institute, one of the pieces of feedback that I got from Rick Moody was that my writing struck him as cute. He cringed as he said it, as if it were the worst thing in the world, but really I could have thought of a hundred different things he could have said that would have upset me more.

I walked away from the review session thinking “cute’s not so bad,” but now, after having had six months to mull it over, I’ve decided that “not so bad” isn’t what I’m shooting for in my writing. What’s more, my current draft does read as cute. Kind of a girly Joss Whedon tpe of prose, which isn’t surprising given that I’m a huge Joss Whedon fan and I am, after all, a girl.

But I’ve been listening to “Another Bullshit Night In Suck City” by Nick Flynn (to keep me awake while I’m nursing though the night) and I’ve come to really like his style. His voice is great. I feel like I’m having a conversation with the guy. The prose feel natural, unforced and engaging. That’s what I’m going for. So I’m thinking about my own voice.

I’m a person who gives it to you straight. I do occasionally swear (thought that is slowly being trained out of me by the little one who repeats everything). I enjoy a raunchy turn of phrase or joke at my own expense.

My character has none of these characteristics. Now, she is not me, but as the writer, I do hope the story will come across in my voice. So I find myself wanting to go back and revise, revise, revise. And there’s the second challenge. I generally work under a policy of “never go back.” I have about 100 pages of rewrite to go before this draft is done.

I guess what I need to do is keep typing until I get to the end and then go back and change what needs to be changed. That’s how I’ve always done it. It’s just too frustrating to jump back to the beginning of an unfinished project. It makes me feel like it will never get finished. I could revise the first chapter forever, but if I don’t write an ending, it won’t be a very good book.

Now back to work before the baby wakes up.