Reflections on the puddle of life

Little Fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?

Nice to see you around Lote. Enigmatic as always

I like the verse. Very true.

Well Fifth, I wanted to give a really detailed answer to this, but i don't think I have the energy to really write up a good reply. I guess one day i will write up my own blog on the subject, but this is something near and dear to my heart.

You seem to mix up two things in this blog: a writer's voice with themes and ideas. In my opinion they have very little to do with each other. A writer's voice is a refinement of his writing craft. It is integrated with his personality, but it comes out of hard work of constantly writing. It is the development of style synthesized through his personal experience, his cultural experience. Robert Lewis Stevenson is hardly a profound writer of ideas, but he had an exquisite prose style and a distinct voice. Same thing with Mark Twain. I have never found Twain to be that profound, but no one had Twain's distinct voice.

Great writing is ultimately about great writing, not profound ideas. If you want to write aboout ideas you might as well write an essay. Fiction writers don't think up anything new. It's all out there. Art is about craft. Notice St Luke's blogs on his paintings. He never talks about any profound philosophic ideas. That's for college professors who don't have a clue about writing or art. Art is about craft; writing is about writing.

If you want to develop a distinct voice, concentrate on feeling comfortable with sentence patterns, rhythms, diction, and slang. I can elaborate on all of these, but I don't have the will at the moment. I've mentioned this a few times on lit net: I try to read at least one book a year on the art of writing. Many of the books are repeatitive and don't offer that much new, but it doesn't matter. The re-reading of writer's techniques is important in and of itself, even if I'm getting the same info from different books. Once a year is not too much to focus on the craft of writing.

Also, I would be carefull to say one appreciates the voice of a writer from a different language. Unless you have read that writer in his original, then I'm not sure translation really captures voice. It may approximate it, but voice is distinct to a language. I have no idea how one can capture the voice of Joyce's Ulysses in a different language.

Well, those are some of my thoughts.

What a lovely, thoughtful essay. I'm not sure but whay you can't exist as a human without questioning yourself, if only occasionally. In the end, it's how we grow-we have experiences and then we reflect. And you do that very well, Fifth; almost better than anyone else here. I find your "voice", at least in your prose writing, to be thoughful. You swing out wide but you always bring it back seemingly effortlessly, and you always leave us with something to think about. I hear your voice, Fifth, loud and clear.

And yours, too, Virgil.

Lovely Fifth :) I agree with Virgil in that I associate the voice of someone's writing with the structure of their sentences, the vocabulary used, even the general way that they shape a story. This is something that can be practiced and honed. Having something to say... that is different. Either people have a story to tell or they don't. It sounds like you certainly have one, so all you need is the confidence to put it on paper in uncensored glory. That is the most difficult part that I find. Good luck.

Qimi you have more faith in me than myself, but your words are wise and kind as always. Perhaps I do have a voice, but I just don't feel it. Perhaps it is because my voice is driven by 'perhaps', and 'maybe' and 'possibly' and perhaps I need to come to accept that that is what it is. Perhaps

Meg thanks also for your kind comments. I think you are right about 'uncensored glory'. It is a wise and thoughtful point. It is, I think, what I was trying to get to with a lot more words. It's good to see you around

Virgil I might have expected that as an engineer you might approach this from a mechanical angle Everything you say is valid and correct, but it's not the whole story and it's not the whole explanation of voice. It is right, of course, that a writer must practice. Practice is what makes us better writers, just as my training rides made me a better cyclist. I understand this instinctively. I don't need to read a manual to tell me to do it, and I don't think manuals will help me. That is not to say that it might not work for someone else or that it's not a valid method of getting to where you want to be, but it would not work for me. I also know this instinctively. I would be nothing but suspicious about any book which purported to tell me anything about the craft of writing, unless I could also find the great novel by the same writer as proof that by following such advice a great novel can result. And even for those writers who can show their great novel, this still does not mean that following their path, their approach would work for me. In a sense, the great writer's manual to a great novel is self contained in the work itself. Someone else can intuit that for me, but for me to understand it I need to intuit it for myself. It is just the way I am If I am to find my voice it is through my own experience. It is by writing and crafting and doing. If I am looking for my voice I will find it in me, not in a book written by somebody else. But I fear, at the moment, that I am approaching my writing in the wrong way. That my writing is driven by the wrong things and because of that I am driven to fail. So perhaps I am thinking: I would like to write a great book so I can leave my job and become a full time writer and because of that my writing becomes driven by an idea, an idea of a future me. But this does not exist, it is not real and because of that my writing lacks authenticity. Perhaps when I write I am afraid of failing, so my writing becomes driven by fear. I bring my motive for my writing to the table and it shows. So I am trying to focus myself on something concrete. And I need to be open (not afraid), distant (divorced from my ego, or dreams, perhaps, of what I'd like my writing to represent in relation to me), and at peace (devoid of expectation). By removing the barriers, I have a better chance of reaching my voice through the application of well crafted effort. I have to write because it is what I want to do, with no higher or future meaning. Because it is a part of me which I need to try to stop moulding, and let it breathe.

Technique can be learned, but there is something more to a great book than technique. It is like a bridge. You can build a bridge using the same formula (technique) as was used for every bridge which has gone before and you will have a perfectly good bridge, but you will not have a work of art. An artist may design an amazing bridge, but if they ignore the basic rules the bridge will fall apart, it will fail as a bridge. The answer is somewhere in between. Art takes both technique and vision. StLukes uses craft to produce his vision and creates art. It is a fusion of both. I could follow the techniques given in books until I'm old and grey and can't see my laptop screen anymore but without vision, without a voice, it'll be nothing more than nicely put together words.

I'm not convinced that voice is created through diction and rhythm and sentence structure and word choice because that has not been my experience as a reader. Those things may denote style, and style may be part of a writers voice but it is does not make a writers voice, in the same way that a bridge may be made of brick or steel or stone but the brick or steel or stone does not make a bridge and bridge. Voice transcends those things. It is why voice can be detected even in translation. It is why a writer can produce different books in different styles, and even different styles within the same book but maintain a distinctive voice. It is something intuitive. I'm not sure I'm capable of expressing it. It is not about ideas either, I agree entirely about that. They are both a part of it and are neither a part of it. I'm not sure if you've ever read anything by David Mitchell, but Mitchell is an excellent example of why voice is not dictated by style. Mitchell has written 5 different books in different styles, and in Cloud Atlas and Number9Dream he wrote in different styles within the books and maintained something which was distinctly Mitchell. I can't explain what it is, but if you read him you might understand what I mean more clearly. IIf you ever fancy giving him a go, I'd recommend Cloud Atlas both because it is good and because it might explain better than I can what I mean. I'm not saying that you're wrong, you're not wrong and neither am I. I think we are both just missing some of the pieces.

Notice I never added 'succinct' to my list of goals. I've learned not to fight that one

What I was trying to say.

Ok Fifth. I'll just say your response sounds so - hmm, how should I say it? - romantic.

It amazes me how musicians (real composers, not rock muscians who are essentially writing the same work over and over) need years of study before they can compose anything of note. Artists need years of study and practice to paint and work fine arts. But any old person thinks they can intuitively pick up a pen and write something of artistic merit. As if it just comes by magic.

By the way, there are no books on how to really write a great novel. I was just referring to writing voice and style. There are lots of good books on writing style. The other component to a novelist is story and character. I wasn't referring to that.

I've never read Mitchell, but if he wrote five novels iu five different voices, then he really had to study the craft of writing in minute detail. That's exactly what I'm referring to. It could not have come intuitively to write in five different styles.

This is a very interesting post Fifth. It would make a good thread for discussion too.

I found your points in the first post resonated with me, particularly the bits about writing frustration and being spoon fed by the media. They do annoy me. I once considered journalism, but became disgusted with the papers. I often now think I would like to write in an anti journalistic way - ie more truthfully.

As for voice - it is difficult. Writing on this forum and at work - is helping me to get ideas quicker and get them down in a more erudite way than previously. Voice has also to be linked to what you really want to write about, and how you approach that. I think I'm still looking for what it is I really want to write.