FINDING YOUR VOICE

Finding your voice is not like inventing your own language. That sounds cool and has been done, but necessitates teaching it to others in order to communicate. After all, if you are writing in English, we only have 26 symbols (though most are unrecognizable if by my hand) to form words, or at least an approximation of sound—onomatopoeia—a jumble of sounds in itself!


We can add to that with punctuation, and then numbers and mathematical symbols, which quickly become another language few of us really understand. I confess my vocabulary stops at simple arithmetic.


With all the writing advice out there, and there is a LOT, it's easy to get lost. I think part of discovering voice is remembering why we write, or speak, or create any type of art. There are shades of difference for each of us but also commonality. If it's to communicate something, even if only to ourselves—pain and heartbreak or joy and wonder and the infinite shades in between—I think it's as important to look inward as much as out.


As a writer, or an author, we can add a few more tools. Typesetting and font choice come to mind and I think are worth exploring. There are entire sciences devoted to each, and the effect they have on our perception. I'm constantly reminded as I write and begin thinking ahead, of how not just the words, but the delivery of those same words, can be manipulated much like a film editor changes the meaning of visuals by their order and duration.


Maybe it's my efforts as a filmmaker—a screenwriter, editor, colorist, sound designer, and director—that make me think in these terms. Part of my discovery is realizing how much I respond to cinematic writing. So, I keep going.


"IN A WORLD..."