Finding one's voice

If you ask my editor: "what's Ulff like? How does he talk?" she will most definitely say: "Read his book, you can hear his voice in his style."
And she would not be the only one.

Fact of the matter is, I say what I think, and I write what I think. There is no filter between me and the page, or me and the sound for that matter. I've got in "trouble" because of that, telling a store manager that his lack of action was utter shit, or taking down my superior in the army because he accused me of lying, while he was, in fact, the one who told the lie.

What you hear/read is what you get, I don't fuck around. In film I'd probably go for all handheld cameras and shit just because I feel it feels more intimate.

But while I spoke my mind pretty much from the get go, not giving a fuck what others might think, I did not start out that way in writing. Far from it.

Everyone, in any creative art category, starts copying whatever influenced them to pick up the pen, brush, guitar in the first place. It takes practice to feel different. I daresay that you need to know yourself in order to find your voice; and I don't mean the facebook profile knowing, but realizing who the fuck you really are, down to the core.

Much like the musician or painter, a writer's best work comes when heart and learning meet, a metaphysical wedding so to speak. You need the latter to play your instrument, be it keyboard or pen, colors and brushes, or frets and strings and fingers. Without knowing what goes where, all one ever accomplishes is hapless scratching that is painful to behold. (side note, some will, correctly, say that there are works of art out there that resemble nothing more than boogers on white canvas. To me that is as much art as a car alarm is music)

So once you know what you're doing, you can start writing, painting, composing, right? Sure you can! And it will be proficiently done, the meter's right, the colors have the necessary shading, the rhythm is impeccable. Yet it's as sterile as the inside of an unopened syringe bag. That is not to say that it can't be good, most people will probably be impressed by one's work... sadly, a computer might soon be able to do the same: learn the theory, analyze the practical application, randomize, and voila, an impeccable piece of assembly-line art. Hey, if it works for all the casting show people, it will work for you, right?

This is where voice comes in. I'm pretty sure there are enough people out there who would be quite satisfied with being the literary equivalent of Brittney Spears, wait, that already happened, her name is Stephanie Meyer, and unlike Ms Spears she wrote all of her own stuff. So yea, you can be like Stephanie Meyer, having sold lots of books, and who will be remembered for the inspiration to the book (I kid you not) "I dreamed of a beautiful man" end of inspiration.

Or you can be the literary equivalent of Queen, you know the Radio GaGa, Bohemian Rhapsody Queen. Hand-crafted excellence. Sure, you might not sell gazillions of books and your integrity, but you will have fans, loyal not only beyond the next fad but also beyond death.

Personally, I'd rather be Queen.

But how does one achieve such a thing? Love. All you need is love. Beatles antics aside, it is love. Love for your craft, love for the words, love for yourself, your ideals, your vision. Sure, you might take away the love for yourself and still achieve the same, albeit posthumously, become the Kurt Cobain of literature then, won't work for you, obviously, but the rest of a generation and beyond will remember your name, maybe.

Every character should, ideally, be confronted with the same questions: Who am I? Where am I going? What the fuck am I doing here? Sure, we can make up motivations galore, and there's a lot of books out there who toss motivation, personal motivation, overboard and just get on with the bloody plot. And while plots are nice, the thing we remember most from any of those novels is the little moments, the personal ones, when a character we have grown to love suddenly dies of a heart attack, or the misguided warrior realizes his mistake and dies trying to atone for it, or just the notion that a mother is so shell-shocked she packed her daughter's severed head in a basket because of how well she had braided her hair that day.

These people die or suffer in some cases without having found the answer to any of those questions, yet it is those questions that touch us.

If you've found the answer for yourself (my answer by the by is: "I am a writer, if I don't write I die, and the next bout of writing will soon come, oh wait it's here, I am living it right now!") finding your voice is easier.

I don't like high-brow speeches, I abhor pretentiousness, and I loathe self-serving arrogance. All that is reflected in my speech patterns and my voice when writing. I am I and I don't give two fucks if I offend someone. If something smells like shit, I will say so; sure, some might say that swearing doesn't make you a better writer, and they are right, swearing alone does not make you a better writer! It does, however, make you a more honest writer.

Imagine, if you can, this scene, in an English trench at a little place called Somme, in France. Shells are exploding regularly, on both sides. They plow through the already churned earth, sending geysers of mud and blood and bone and flesh and wire into the air. The last mustard gas attack has just finished and the signal that the air is clear has just been rung.

"Hey, my good man, do you happen to know whose foot this is?" the sergeant asked, pointing at the limb next to him.
"Why no, sir, I'm not quite sure."
"Neither am I, sir, but we can ask Kenny. Kenny, do you know whose foot this is... Kenny? Oh my gosh they killed Kenny!" (this was the PG version, written by some pretentious idiot who has no idea of army life!)

now the same, written by foul-mouthed, honest me

"Oi!" roared the sergeant. "Headcount! I wanna know whose fucking foot this is!"
The soldiers he commanded gave their names, glancing at each other to confirm their friends were still in one piece.
"Shit," swore MacDugan. "They got Kenny."

No pretentiousness there, it's as it could have happened. Fuck, it probably happened all over the place, not with bare feet, but I'm fairly certain meat puzzles were nothing out of the ordinary back then in the trenches of the Somme.

But even the pretentiousness could be pulled off by someone who actually believed in it. Look at all the war journals and eye witness accounts written by aristocrats during the Somme or any other battle, They were detached from it all.

Problem is, if you write from the eyes of a common soldier, one who has not been raised by Puritans and Bible-fetishists, soldiers will be foulmouthed bastards amongst themselves, so chances are you must write them that way, unless you want to sound utterly artificial.

All that, however, you will only truly understand the moment you understand and like yourself, because that is the moment you can truly empathize with and understand others.