A million years ago (back at the turn of the century) when I was working as a research assistant at the University of New South Wales, one of my jobs was to write up the project findings into reports.
I was sent with a tape recorder and notebook up the road to the Sydney Children’s Hospital, where I would sit in meetings and observe the way the multi-disciplinary teams worked together. Then I would walk back down the road, spend countless hours transcribing tapes and attempt to make some sense of them.
After I had been there a year or so, my boss pulled me aside.
‘I can hear your voice, Shannon,’ he told me.
As I had been sitting there silently, terrified that I had been pulled into his office, I thought that a strange comment.
‘In your writing,’ he continued clearly seeing the dumb look on my face. ‘I can hear your voice as I read.’
He motioned to the weighty tomes around the office. ‘In academic writing,’ he continued, ‘the writer must not be present in the text. Your voice, however, is strong and comes through in your report. It’s as though you’re sitting next to me, talking.’
Chastened, I went back to my office where I spent the next few years trying to remove myself from my writing.
Some years later, in the throes of new motherhood I decided to take up blogging as a way of capturing the fleeting yet precious moments of parenthood.
After the first few clunky efforts, I quickly found that blogging suited my writing style. I had a clear voice and I was finally allowed to use it.
Meg Rosoff writes:
‘Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul.”
A writer’s voice is their literary fingerprint. You should be able to distinguish between Hemingway and Rowling, between Austen and King, not just by the words the chose, but the voice the write with.
I look back now and feel that my years of blogging has given me a strong voice, a confidence that perhaps I wouldn’t have had if I jumped straight into writing novels. Feedback from AWC tutor Lesley Gibbs on my assessment for their Chapter Books for 6-9 Year Olds course was that I had a lovely voice and it was the first time she’d ever given that as feedback in the course. You can imagine how chuffed that made me feel.
My writing goal, is that when you read my words, you hear my voice. When you are hearing words through your ears rather than seeing them with your eyes, you know that the voice is authentic.
shannonmeyerkort.com 