Who Said That?
I am, for reasons that will soon become obvious, continually drawn back to the idea of writing “voices” these days; the way in which writing – and, specifically, my writing, although obviously this happens to many, many people – takes on new shape and form depending on who and what I’m writing for. The writing that I did for myself, a decade back, wasn’t in the same voice as Fanboy Rampage!!!, for example, which wasn’t in the same voice as io9, and so on and so on.
For the most part, that’s a fairly natural, or at least instinctive, change; you don’t talk to everyone in your life in the same way, after all – your relationship and status and whatever feeds into the you you are at that point, and it’s a similar thing for me, when I write. But right now, I’m feeling kind of stuck in a voice that isn’t necessarily me.
The problem is twofold; on the one hand, there’s an uncertainty about the value of my writing that I simply have to get over – It’s an ego thing, or really, the opposite; my confidence in myself is shaken, which sounds like a plot for a crappy cowboy movie where the sheriff needs to get over himself in order to deal with whatever varmints are threatening the town, steady his shaking hand and take the shot – and on the other, there’s a more tangible reaction to having written, daily, in another “voice” – the io9 voice – for more than two years, and having been edited to sound more like that voice for more than two years, and having tried to reshape my words into a closer resemblance of that voice for more than two years, it’s kind of become second nature to just default into that voice. And, as fine as that voice is, it’s not really mine.
The answer, I guess, is simply to write my way out of it and rediscover the me-ness of my writing, or at least, a palatable and adaptable voice that I can use in multiple places. I’m reminded of writing for Newsarama’s blog, when it first started, and the odd manner in which I felt like I was growing up in public by doing so, letting everyone watch as my writing voice broke, or shifted in some way. Life sure was less embarrassing for all those writers starving in secret, way back in the distant pre-internet days…
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I have the same issue– I did an official blog for Sony for 18 months and it required a kind of strident enthusiasm and more formal approach than I was used to, in addition to being overseen and edited by several people higher up the food chain than me, including people from legal.
It was kind of like writing under a vice grip, dissolving my personality into something more corporate/PR than I’m used to. And sometimes that’s stuck with me– I was talking with Laura a few months back about Comics Alliance stuff, and she said that she’d love it if I’d 4thletter! up my CA pieces more. Which absolutely makes sense, but is sometimes hard to wrap my head around. I try to pay attention to my writing and figure out my tics (I have a long and terrible relationship with the word apparently, which I’m doing my best to purge), but that kind of thinking can be hard.
And ego-and-value-of-your-writing-wise… pfffft. You’re good, even within Gawker constraints.