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I just read a series of posts on Kristen Lamb’s blog on the writer’s voice. If any of you haven’t looked at it, I would recommend it. This woman knows the business, and seems to be a straight shooter to me. Besides that, she’s from Texas. It’s worth the time to listen to what she has to say.
http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/voice-the-key-to-literary-magic-part-1/
After I read it, I started wandering the house clearing my throat, trying to find my voice. About 3:00 a.m., after too much coffee and too many cigarettes, it got pretty ugly. I was hawking up all kinds of stuff and spitting it out on the page.
Green goobery stuff. One word sentences. One word chapters. Coarse language. Texting abbreviations. Any color of verbage but purple.
After sleeping on it, I decided to try a different tack. I put some honey in my tea and watched arty movies. The true meaning of life came to me… in French. I smiled a lot and thought about getting a cat. The words flowed beautifully, a kaleidoscope of colors and sensations that oozed out of the recesses and dripped onto the page.
There were sentences so long that Tolstoy would envy them. Commas began appearing for my commas. Eighteen letter words came from nowhere… words that I had to look up so I could figure out what I meant. It was all very pretty, but not what I wanted to say.
Finally, I put the tea back in the cupboard and got some coffee. I smoked some more cigarettes and thought about it. The conclusion I came to is this:
I’m me
I can’t be Tolstoy. I can’t be Elmore Leonard. I’ve been places and done stuff, and all of it has rubbed off on me, made me what I am. Incorrect punctuation and coarse language are part of me, but Tolstoy is too… Elmore Leonard is too. Every author I’ve read has rubbed off on me… just like every person I’ve met has… just like everything I’ve done has.
So… how do I put that down on the page? How do I get across what I want to say to somebody that doesn’t even want to hear it? How do I make them see the things I’ve seen and feel the things I’ve felt?
I’m still workin’ on it.
T. W. Dittmer 
Awesome post! I now I visuals I wish I didn’t, but that just makes this post even more awesome.
I hate it when people ask me to compare my writing to another author – it’s like asking if I’m like my mother or like my father. Obviously, I’m similar to both, but I’m myself more than I am anyone else.
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Thanks. I’m just thinking out loud, trying to figure out what I’m doing here. So true what you said about parents.
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“There were sentences so long that Tolstoy would envy them. Commas began appearing for my commas. Eighteen letter words came from nowhere… words that I had to look up so I could figure out what I meant. It was all very pretty, but not what I wanted to say.”
Loved that!
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I can spend hours, or even days, looking for the right word sometimes. Sometimes I think there must be a bad sector in my hard drive 😛
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Oh my gosh. This was so well put. “I’m me.” sums it up beautifully. So, if that means we use an adverb, exclamation point, a “just,” indefinite number, or comma where WE want the reader to pause, perfect. That is because “We are we.”
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Hmmmm. Don’t know about that for sure. Maybe it’s just the Popeye syndrome.
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I yam what I yam?
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Oh yeah. Got a big dose of that from somewhere, and no amount of antibiotics will clear it up. 😛
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Try spinach.
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That ought to work. Toot toot!
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Certainty. (toot! toot!) It’s got punch. Knowing how to throw that punch… certainty well-practiced. 😉 You.
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At the bottom of your posts are other “related” posts. I know I’ve read your entire blog before, but this post was good to read again. Really good. I am who I am, and whether you hate what I write, or love what I write, it is mine; it is me. I’m not changing. I’m learning (which is good), but I’m not changing. Thanks for a good reminder, Tim.
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😛 Oh yeah. We are who we are. Trying to be someone else doesn’t do life justice.
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