Bumps Along the Way

When I made my plan for the year, I had originally expected to publish my first Kindle book in February 2020. After all, the first draft of the book was completed by the end of Summer 2019. All I needed to do was to edit the first draft, convert it to Kindle format, and - on with the show. Not so fast! Since this was my first one, there were things I hadn't anticipated.

First, the draft was handwritten which meant that I had to get it into electronic form to do anything with it. One could argue that I should have typed the first draft into a word processor. But, one would be arguing pointlessly if they did. I enjoy writing by hand. I also enjoy writing at the computer. And it would be too complicated to explain which I prefer for any given project. Nonetheless, I had to get some voice recognition software so I could read the essays into the computer.

The voice recognition software I got was quite good and easy to use, but my handwriting was horrid. In my defense, I would point out that I was in dire need of cataract surgery so I couldn't see that well. And my limited vision was reflected in my handwriting. Still, I managed to read all the essays into a Word document, printed it out, and then had to face my next shock. You need to develop a new skill in order to read a document into voice recognition software. If you mumble, belch, speak incoherently, or make parenthetical remarks to yourself, it all shows up in the document. So, my first pass at editing the document was to make the transcribed version intelligible.

This was more difficult than it might seem. In some extreme cases, I had to look at the garbled words in the document, then at the unreadable handwritten scrawl and try to figure out what I was trying to say. It was like trying to Spackle the bark on a pine tree. It took persistence, patience and modest expectations. Persistence I am good at. They other two are not my strong suits. Nonetheless, I got a workable draft done by early February and thought I might still make the February deadline. But, sadly, it was not to be.

As I reread the intelligible draft, editing it for content, I realized that something was missing. I would read a line and realize that I could have used different words, or conveyed a slightly different sense, or even expressed the thought entirely differently. What was missing was that I had not yet fully developed my voice for writing essays. You develop your voice by writing, writing, writing until you fall into a comfortable pattern of how you express yourself.

For example, I have written over 150 book and article reviews. So, when I review something, I don't think about my voice. I just write, edit and rewrite. I have a review voice for reviewing books, a scholarly voice for academic articles and a blogger voice for blogging. All are fairly well developed. I have more than a half dozen other blogs I have created (and usually abandoned) over the years. If you are interested, check out Dr Artz Ranting and Reflecting for some grumbling about being an academic.This blog legocogitoscribo.blogspot.com/, which you are currently reading is written in that comfortable blogger voice. But, essays are different and although I have written hundreds so far, they are all first drafts and my voice has not yet emerged.

This last  bump prompted me to think a little more deeply about the writing process and explore three almost mystic aspects of writing: voice, style, and muse. People often ask writers where their ideas come from and writers will hem and haw unable to answer that fairly straightforward question. But, an even more important question, which is never asked is "once you have an idea, where do the words come from?" And we can take that a step further and ask "once you have the words how do you organize and/or modify them to represent what you want to say most clearly". Those are the tough questions. Let me tip toe into this with a simple example.

Let's say that you go out to the end of your driveway one morning to pick up the paper. You see your neighbor doing the same thing so you ask how they are and then ask if they had heard about some event that was dominating the news. Asking how they are is a mere  pleasantry. You probably don't really care. But, the question about the news is a little more novel. Where did that question come from? For purposes of this example, we are going to call that your muse. What they hear is your voice. If you sounded like somebody else, (like on that State Farm commercial) it would be really weird. But, your voice not only has a unique sound but a unique style. You may have an accent for example. Or a unique tone such as judgemental or reassuring. While you are talking to your neighbor, you do not pause to wonder how all that is happening. How do you turn thoughts into words? How do they turn sound waves into words and words back into thoughts again. If somebody were to ask you where your sentences come from you would be a loss and would probably think it was a silly question. This is how a writer feels when asked where his or her ideas come from.

For now, we will say that a writer's voice is how you sound to the reader. It is also that voice in your head that tells you when you have really nailed an idea or when you need to work on it some more. Your style is how you organize your voice to express an idea in terms pattern, tempo, emphasis, word choice, inflection and so on. And your muse is that mystical generative part of your brain that produces thoughts and words for you to express an idea. As you write more and more, the distinction between these three becomes less clear. But, for now, I am going to treat them as separate entities in the next few posts so we can understand each one better and consider ways in which you might develop them.

(n.b. As I post this blog entry, I am struggling to convert my final word document into a Kindle book using Kindle Create. It is another unanticipated hurdle to get over. Musings may produce interesting questions like "what is the difference between voice and style" but they do not produce final products. Back to work!)