It almost sounded like an accusation when I was told this. To me, it seemed obvious. Why would I speak and write the same?
My handwriting doesn’t sound like my voice and no one has questioned that. If I painted would someone expect my brush strokes to carve the oils in wavelengths of my voice?
I found this to be a curious observation. I felt I could hear the disappointment. They had met the wizard behind the curtain. Just a small woman from a desert, nothing more. There is no lore to be seen. I am not yet a rowan, not yet a volcano. Not all that rare. Just another person.
Pity, I know. Such a disappointment.
Let me try to clear this up. This is not a conversation (as much as I wish it was). You are given my thoughts and memories as I craft them to share with you. I believe it is an art. I am presenting something to you: These broken-in, fit-me-perfect phrases. My emotions threaded, sewn, and folded in my off-shape rhythms. Pockets of thought. (I have pockets!)
Is it not obvious? I am trying to lure you in. My voice alone cannot do that. I needed a moment to get to the horizon of my thoughts. I know more now, so I can say more. Pondered and processed. My written thoughts are a gift from the space I stole while being silent. That thieving allows me to say more with writing than with my uttered, sputtered words.
This voice I was told wasn’t like me is perhaps more like me. I am finally able to articulate and share my thoughts in a runnel of information instead of chippy starts and stops that leave everyone wondering what the hell just happened. At least with my writing, if you are wondering what occurred you can re-read it. Decipher it on your own time. I will always leave it here for you.
Maybe the person who commented never knew I had so much to say. It can come as a surprise. The silent one? The one who couldn’t tell us a simple what is telling the world a complex why?
Writer Andrea can be a bit much, maybe even more so if you know the other one.
I have to walk a curious line between sharing my muchness and not splattering it on those close by. I try to be careful. Considerate. I have wondered how those tangled up in my life feel seeing their shadows fixed to my pages. I do my best to grant them themselves when I write of them. But I do wonder who they will hear: themselves, or one of my voices.
This is my concern, I worry about not capturing people correctly— not writing how I talk. I will fret and read and analyze my writing down to each phenome to find each player’s voice just right.
Not mine.
The idea of doing all this work, gathering all my thoughts, and no one thinking it was me will not keep me up at night. What keeps me up is wondering how I capture the moments that taught me the most. Who do those moments sound like? What voice do I write that in?
Perhaps the problem is I do not know my own voice at this moment. It is as if I yelled out and was surprised by the pitch, by the resonance. I am finding myself. I am searching for how I was made, which parts I arrived with, and what was added on later, by who? I can say things now, but I prefer to write them down and let you read it.
I am braver— clearer now than I was a year ago, than even a few months ago. There is a boldness in me that I am still uncovering. I can put it down on the pages, but then I still walk and talk like a human who just wants to get her errands done.
That must confuse people.
It frustrates me. It didn’t before but now it does.
I use a voice that lets me move through the world. I’ve been taught this voice. I wrote an entire book in that voice, and I think it is not mine. That is why I am writing a different book now.
I wonder what voice we will hear. What voice I will hear?
Will I recognize it?
Will you?
Dare I say check your own voice? Does it sound the way you want it to? Does it scare your heart to look?
Well, hang on. I’m about to tell you a story…
The best writing advice I ever got was “write the way you talk”. 🤣
I am still looking for my writing voice a bit. Or maybe trying to rediscover it after learning so much about craft but when I write something that feels very much “me” I still don’t think it sounds the same as my speaking voice. There are elements of that that come through but I think of my speaking voice and writing voice as different. You’re crafting something carefully and editing it as opposed to saying things on the fly. How could it be the same?