I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: I developed my voice on this blog and it carried forward into my book. For one year, I tried to write the Bridge Ladies as a kind of New Yorker essay. No first person writing at all. Everyone I shared it with told me (in polite terms) that is sucked. My husband kept saying, you have to use your blog voice. (My husband initially discouraged me from blogging because of certain impulse control problems I’m known for, eventually he saw that it was becoming something amazing in my life.) I kept resisting; I couldn’t see my “blog voice” as having anything to do with The BRidge Ladies. But when I finally shifted to first person, the pages started coming to life, my sense of humor got engaged, and more important, I was able to write more deeply than I had been.
What is voice? It’s one of the most important aspects in a piece of writing and yet it’s something of a chimera. You can’t teach it, you can’t describe it the way you can talk about craft, you can’t fuck it. You don’t have to write in first person; voice comes through in any pov, any tense, any style. Yet, how exactly is intelligence, humor, empathy, authority communicated? Can you add it after like a pinch of salt or does it have to emanate from the sentences from the get go? Is it in the DNA of your writing or can it be developed, manipulated, deployed? Is voice an extension of how you sound or is it developed independently through the language you use. What exactly do we mean when we say voice-driven prose?
How do you find your voice?
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I was defending my decision not to go back into therapy to my husband today. The time. The money. But mostly the agony. For the first time in my life I’m happy with my misery. Do you feel me? I always went to therapy to change. Then I realized (after 30 years) that I was never going to change and was happy for “awareness”. Happy to stop acting out at every family gathering. Then what? Please don’t get me wrong I think therapy is critical for many people and most writers. But I’m no longer willing or able to jump down the well and climb my way out with a spoon. I’m okay with crying at the dry cleaner for “no reason.” I understand that given the chance to imagine the best or worst in something I will always go for the latter. I’m okay with the voices in my head. Though they could be a little nicer.
My mother and I ride again. This morning to the Reform Temple of Westchester in Scarsdale where we will play Bridge with a group of women, followed by my giving a reading, followed by my mother stealing the show during the Q&A. Afterwards, I fully expect a shopping trip to the Westchester Mall where I will revert to my teenage self in the fitting rooms and have a melt down when she weighs in on what looks “flattering” or asks for the four millionth time why I have to wear black.
I’m watching Me, Earl and the Dying Girl for the third time, okay fourth. I am in love with this young actor Thomas Mann. And the girl (Olivia Cooke) is the first since Ali McGraw who I don’t want to die. Usually, I’m like pull the fucking plug and take us all out of our misery.
Betsy Lerner 