Writers looking for their voices
2008 November 29
Cheri Block Sabraw
Cheri Block Sabraw, a writing teacher, has an amusing post on her students’ struggle to find their voices as auteurs. Voice, she says, is a “fingerprint, a signature, unique to each writer”. The trouble is that you’re born with a fingerprint, but you have to search hard to find your voice.
The Buddhist insight for her students is this: We’re all in the same boat. Amy Tan is. I certainly am. All of us are, even and especially those who write in the first person, hoping that this automatically takes care of it, which it does not.
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Andreas,
Yes. Rule #4 concerns writing in the first person.
Example: Grace, I know I begin many of my sentences with “as” and I overuse words such as “vibrancy”, “trump”, and “of course” (not to mention parentheses out the ying-yang), but my first person narration just makes it my voice, right? Grace??? Where did you go, Grace?
I find your advice very interesting but so hard to put into practice. Trying to find my voice,lost in the waves of other writers.
At some point, it’s better to stop paying attention to other writers; the cacophony of too many “voices” will only confuse you.