Joanna Siwiec Response: WT, Ch 5: Finding Voice

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#441

The chapter on voices brought me to a self evaluation of my own voice in writing, and how many voices live in my words. Recently, after reading one of my creative nonfictions, my professor wrote on the back of it, “you have a beautifully idiosyncratic, Kafka-esque voice in your writing.” I did not know whether to be insulted, or complemented. It was the first time I began thinking of voice as my ultimate transference to the reader. Voice is not something I focus on when writing, yet I am often aware of my mood in relation to my subject matter. At times when I find myself focusing on my voice, I don’t like the “sound” of it. I know how I want to portray it, but I cannot give the voice to the reader. The power that the reader has over the author’s voice is another concept to think of. The reader won’t know the rapidity, the pauses, the accents on vowels, the sharpness of consonants. The voice that I hear with every fragment I write is particular to that fragment’s meaning. With the reader’s own voice on the writing, the meaning changes.

The concept of the “I” in creative nonfiction is something I have grown to avoid in most of my pieces. Perhaps it grew from academic writing technique, but I have never been fond of the “I” and tend to keep it offstage. If I add the voices of others, they tend to be abrupt and stand on their own without direct adjectives describing what was said. The “I” to me would directly pull my existence into the piece, and I would find difficulty in being personal knowing that the reader is directly hearing from first person.

The voice of innocence and the voice of experience are interesting concepts in the chapter as well. Looking back at my journals from my teenager years, I find my voice to have been angry and spiteful. The teenage angst making lists of people I hated, or the pages filled with how horrible my day was. My voice in my twenties is one of indifference, but with a tinge of an ongoing existential crisis–at least the way I like to see it. I do find that my voice changes in the physical location of my writing, regardless of the content. My voice is different when I am cold, or hot, or whether it is daylight or not. Something that I have consciously worked on in my writing is taking out the eloquence of words, and turned them into fragments that are natural and honest. My voice in writing stems from a dissociation of the self I try to put in words, and usually results in second person narration that reflects fragments containing deeper meaning than the simple words that hold it.

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