Finding my writer’s voice 4

Pink Think: “To be nobody but yourself in a world which is working night and day to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight and never stop fighting.” – e.e. cummings

Have you ever read someone else’s blog post that gets you really going, and you have to rein in your comments, because after all it’s THEIR blog, not yours? Well, Melinda Morley’s blog entry on voice recently got me going that way. It got me thinking of how my father and a college teacher influenced my writing voice.

When I was a college freshman, I wrote an essay for an English class about my brother. When my father read it (he was in the Philippines, I was in Utah)his comment was, “It’s good, but try not to write about personal things next time.” I was crushed, but I thought, “Dad is right.”

You see, most of my young life my father would take my raw writings and mold them into something “better.” He meant well, but it stunted me as a writer. Until I left the Philippines and lived away from my dad, my writing was technically good, but hollow.

Two more years of mediocre, stilted writing passed. My junior year, I took a class that changed my writing life forever.

It was a class based around The New Yorker magazine, where the teacher had us write essays after reading ones from the mag. My first piece was probably the most ‘personal’ one I had ever written in my whole life to that point and she shared it with the rest of the class.

When I regressed and wrote high-falutin things, trying to IMPRESS, Mrs. Cannon wrote comments along the margin that she was disappointed. She pushed me to be myself. In other words, that was the first class that taught me if I write authentically, my writing is POWERFUL, can be beautiful even. I am grateful to Mrs. Cannon for giving me permission to use my voice.

Today, my father lives in the States,40 miles from me. Over the years, as I have been more bold about my writing, he has been complimentary, seemingly astonished at my modest success. I think I’ve matured enough in my writing that if he said, “This is too personal,” I’d probably just shrug my shoulders.

I still crave his approval, but we have this unspoken agreement that the only time he gets to look at my pieces is AFTER they are published, when they cannot be changed anymore. When my first novel gets published, it’ll be interesting to see what he thinks of it.

How about you, how did you find your unique “voice”?

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