‘An original voice’

What is a voice, and how do I get one?

Much of the truth of publishing and writing hides behind a delicate web of coded language. A mystic vocabulary that masks layers of meaning that even the insiders don’t always fully understand. It’s only now, when I have come to what I think of as my ‘no bullshit’ phase of life, that I am starting to think more about how we use these words and what they really mean; and who they exclude in particular. I work with so many authors who are desperately trying to understand publishing, and I hope to demystify as much as I can through my writing here. 

The concept of the literary ‘voice’ is such a term, often used with great mysticism. We talk about finding it as though it is some metaphorical holy grail, but also some real thing, just waiting out there for us to slip it on, like a glove. 

To complicate matters further, the phrase ‘find your voice’ is most commonly used politically. But this should not be confused with finding your voice in literature, which, while connected to the political, is more about method than message.

Having started to take my own writing seriously, and thinking about the authors I work with every week to develop their work, I like to think of a literary or written ‘voice’ in slightly less mystic terms. Voice is essentially a particular style of writing unique to you. It might be deeply connected to who you are as a person, but not necessarily to how you speak. But how to get it? Is it innate or learned? Is it fixed or can it evolve?

There was a phenomena I encountered a few times in my career as an editor at Penguin Random House and since then. These authors had been working away, sometimes for years, within a certain genre, and then had made a switch to another only to see huge success. This sudden success wasn’t always down to switching to a more popular genre; at least I didn’t think so. I think that it came down to finding a genre that suited their voice. Or you might say, subject matter that suited their style. For example, a writer I worked with had been an author of family dramas that had had middling success, but this author’s syntax — the way they put words together — was much better suited to the genre they ended up publishing multiple bestsellers in: crime and thriller.

Another thing was going on, though. It takes writers years of work to come to their most honed and unique voice, and perhaps that was also at play for those genre-switching writers. I’ve been reading some of Hilary Mantel’s early writing lately, her film reviews and other journalism. While her early work certainly has the seeds of her later novels, and is all exquisitely constructed, it took many years of writing — and I suspect of building confidence, both in herself and her publishers in her — to come to the assured genius that enraptured literary prize panels and readers alike. I think too of Angela Carter, whose writing became increasingly unrestrained — and thus unrestrainedly brilliant — as she grew older and had published more. In both of these authors’ work their use of humour markedly increased with experience; why that is deserves a whole other article. But the fact remains, their writing evolved.

It must also be acknowledged that no book stands alone. If you study intertextuality (a very distant concept that I’ve had to brush up on for this article), you will know that it is impossible to separate a book from its context, including the books that have gone before it. And so with our written style. We all develop a way of writing, whether or not we are writers, that is inherently part of the world we were created in. It was cultivated, intentionally or not, by many outside influences: by teachers, parents, social media, friends, and of course other writers. Zadie Smith has spoken about the way she learnt to write, quite literally rewriting her favourite writer’s works so that she could parse their technique. 

So perhaps it is a fallacy to think of anyone’s writing as particularly individual or unique. What is special about it is the human behind it, and the way in which their influences are combined, and then honed — whether intentionally towards a market, or purely towards something that feels right to them. This includes listening to feedback about where their writing is and isn’t working. 

An author I worked with a month or so ago sent me a romcom to edit. But I felt she’d written — or was more suited to write — something more serious, more layered. To put it bluntly, her writing wasn’t overtly romantic or comic. But it did contain some amazing material about modern marriage and long-term friendship, conveyed in a thoughtful, philosophical, poetic language. She admitted to me that not only had another writer said this to her about a year ago, but that she’d ignored their advice because she was scared of writing what seemed like a far harder, less ‘commercial’ book. 

There are two ways this writer could’ve gone. She could’ve worked harder on the romcom elements of the book. She could’ve honed that part of her voice more. And perhaps that would be the more safe route to go; romcoms are doing well right now. But I kept coming back to those lines she’d written: they were where the book came alive to me. Where her particular way of putting words together had succeeded in engaging the parts of my brains that respond to storytelling. A naturalness to them that was hard to define but nevertheless there. And if there is something you are scared to do, then that is always, always, the thing to do. 

There is a passage in My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante that perfectly captures the oxymoronic nature of this cultivated naturalness. The narrator is talking about her friend Lila’s written work: ‘Lila was able to speak through writing…[but] she left no trace of effort, you weren’t aware of the artifice of the written word. I read and I saw her, I heard her.’ A voice is where the writing becomes so good, so practised, that it seems without effort and thus a direct route to the author’s meaning.

Voice and finding it is both hard work and an act of self-belief. Just like us, it evolves as life sends us on different adventures, as we meet new people, as we read new books. Our brains are endlessly plastic in nature, and so our writing is too. At the same time, our authorial voice contains a part of us that nobody else has, though that part of us is always changing too.

Don’t feel under pressure to find this mythical voice; indeed, it can’t be rushed. Like any skill, it must be practised, but it develops best in an atmosphere of fun and experimentation. Learn from other writers. Don’t try too hard. But do take risks: that is where the magic happens.

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Thank you so much for reading another article from the margins. I am taking the next three weeks off to focus on the novel I am writing; I might post if the mood takes me, but I hope you’ll forgive me if not. Come September I will be posting again in earnest, and I have some great ideas stocked up to write about for you. In the mean time I wish you a happy August, and a hope that you find some little pockets for yourself and your passions. And as always, if you have a question that you’d like me to answer here, please email me at katyloftus@gmail.com.

Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash