THE WRITER'S VOICE

By

JOHN SCHERBER

THE WRITER’S VOICE

         Often we start out as novice writers using a style we hope is like that of our favorite novelist. If only, we say, we could write like he does, we’d be nothing short of great! By the time I was a high school junior I had read and admired many of William Faulkner’s books. I thought I understood his technique, his word choices, his quirky punctuation, his choice of characters. I could have made a long list of attributes that made his work distinct from that of other writers. He was hugely successful, and had won the Nobel Prize in 1950.

         His platform was twofold: his early Twentieth Century upbringing––he was born in 1897––was embedded in the South of Reconstruction; the embittered, battered, but stubbornly undefeated South, with its red dirt matrix of race and poverty. An important author once said to me that it was a breeding ground for story-tellers, mining a tradition that went over and over the loose ends of history. Faulkner had left Mississippi to spend a portion of 1925 in Paris, that crucible of literature and caldron of change for all the arts. This gave him the impetus to experiment. The timing and fusion of these two elements gave his style and outlook the unique flavor that made him famous.

         It will be no surprise when I say that my writing came to resemble his as closely as I could make it.

         Part of this is merely the process of modeling, a way of learning. Your father can explain to you at dinner how to pound a nail into a piece of wood, but watching him do it later out on the workbench in the garage is the best way to learn. You see the nuance of his grip on the hammer, the way he places the nail at its entry point and taps it lightly to set it in place. You watch how each swing of the hammer gets more powerful, and you witness the alignment of his eye with the nail’s head. And then, the final blow that sets it level with the surface of the wood. Few ways of picking up a skill are this effective.

         Another aspect of this mimicry idea is that everyone knows that William Faulkner was brilliant, so if my work reads somewhat like his, then I must be at least very good, right?

         But imitation is like taking baby steps, a necessary process but soon outdated. We have had our William Faulkner, now more than fifty years dead, and we don’t need any imitations. No matter how good they seem to be, they will always be no more than weak replicas. Imagine even a highly skilled painter making a copy of a van Gogh that had sold for $40 million. What is it worth, even if it’s so good it’s distinguishable only by an expert? It might be valued at a couple hundred dollars.

         This process is often what happens on a writer’s first book. It is certainly a way of learning a great deal about style and voice, which is beneficial, but it does not produce a competent or salable manuscript. If you are constantly working with one eye on what Faulkner would be saying in this or that paragraph, as I was, you will be neglecting what your character needs to be saying or doing, and more important, what you as your own person, the writer, should be saying or doing. You cannot borrow someone else’s thunder. The risk in trying is that you may have only one book in you, so then, if you are frustrated or disappointed with the outcome, you may be finished with your writing career before you have properly begun.

         By voice, my title word above, I mean your identity as expressed on the page. Like that of Faulkner, yours is unique, and it is composed of elements every bit as legitimate and worthwhile in their origins as his were. But for you to find and develop this voice, you must understand its roots, you must nurture them, and you must have the courage to speak with honesty. You must own all of your own history, even when it includes your demons as well as your strengths––perhaps especially then. Are the great writers always working from their most successful moments? I would say it’s more like rarely that this happens. Embracing all the elements of your self is the foundation of insight and self-knowledge. Its use will not always or even often be in the form of autobiography, but this voice will be heard in the way your characters connect and interact, the responses they have to events in their lives and to their environment, and in the inevitability of what happens to them in the end.

         If you grew up as an only child in a close, loving family of fisherfolk in a seacoast town in New Brunswick, and your principal character is a rogue stock trader in London, the ninth of fourteen children in a family of wasted alcoholics, you will still find that person within yourself, distilled (no pun here) and assembled from your own experience. It is the confidence in what you have learned in life, from your family and friends, your lovers and business associates, your children, that gives you the resources to write this character.

         My fundamental point is that the uses of imitation have their natural limits. Put them aside as quickly as you can, since your task is to know yourself well enough to speak from the heart, your heart, and in your own voice. This means with courage, with honesty, and with the conviction that people will want to hear what you have to say, even when it makes them uncomfortable. Not all of them will, but not everyone reads Faulkner, either. As writers our task is to find our particular audience, and to do that we must present ourselves as we really are, because the connection between reader and writer is an intimate one. Rags, bones, and warts, we are all still human, and the substance of our work is the way our humanity is expressed in our individuality and that of our characters. This is the true voice and tone of what we put on our pages.

         Have we ever heard anyone described as one of the great imitators of all time? Probably not. Good imitators are clever, they may be skillful, but they are not well remembered, once they have departed the scene. Nor are they ever great.

         Ask yourself for a moment, who was William Faulkner imitating? There is an excellent reason why no answer comes to mind.

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