Wednesday 10 August 2011

Hearing your Voice

It's an uncomfortable feeling, listening to your own voice.  It brings with it the terrible realisation that this is how the world hears you -- high-pitched and breathy, or glottal-stopped - whatever it is, it is certainly different from the sound-proofed, private tone you hear inside your own head. In some weird way, it reveals more of you, the inner you, than you feel quite comfortable with.

The same is true of your writing voice.  It shines a bright light on preoccupations and neuroses of which you are barely aware yourself.  It parades your strengths and weaknesses for all to see.  To begin with, until you get used to it, until you get better at it, it's frankly embarrassing.

There are things that you can do to help to overcome this.  Reading is one.  The more you read, the more you discover how other people write -- it's a technical education that isn't available anywhere else and I'm absolutely positive that the elegance and assurance of good writing soon rubs off on an attentive reader.

The other thing to do is to keep writing (see my last post on inspiration/perspiration). Just as your speaking voice is a muscle, in a way your writing voice is as well, and regular exercises (as suggested here from time to time) will help to give it strength and definition.  By reading you will learn through example, by writing yourself you will learn through practice and by doing the two of them together you will gain in confidence so that your self-consciousness will eventually fade away.

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