What is "writer’s voice"? Rachelle Gardner, literary agent, says of this elusive, hard-to-pin down quality, “Voice is not style. It’s not technique. It’s not branding. It’s not a decision to write in first or third person […] your writer’s voice is the expression of YOU on the page. It’s that simple—and that complicated. Your voice is all about honesty. It’s the unfettered, non-derivative, unique conglomeration of your thoughts, feelings, passions, dreams, beliefs, fears and attitudes, coming through in every word you write… and having the courage to express it.”
When I’m writing, I’m channelling Robert Mitchum playing a Raymond Chandler character, a hard-boiled detective faced with a conundrum, usually introduced by a mysterious femme fatale, who disappears but not before she’s led the detective on a wild goose chase to find her and solve the puzzle before something terrible happens. Robert Mitchum’s laconic style is what I’m aiming for.
However, re-reading my writing, I know I never get that detached, ultra-calm demeanour quite right. I invariably wind up sounding like I’m delivering a hyperbolic melodrama, fuelled by a nervous twitch from drinking too much coffee, ever-so-slightly off the rails, like someone who forgot their Meds, while waiting in a queue at the hospital with ticket number 99 just before lunch and the girl behind the desk remembers the time and pulls the shutter down. When it reopens, you’re still 99, but the ticket machine has restarted, and somehow when they deliver the afternoon files, yours has inexplicably sunk to the bottom of the pile. No point in saying you were there first. The blank gaze of the girl behind the counter tells you nobody cares, while her voice instructs you to wait your turn like everybody else. While aiming for a suave, detached noir, I've fallen somewhere between farce and fable, producing a writer’s voice reminiscent of something Mr Bean might write if he could only pull his head out of that chicken.
While googling Hurricane Ophelia - how I love that name, and I can’t wait for an abundance of Ophelias to be born nine months hence - I came across this gem from The Irish Times, and realised where I honed my writing style. I may have left its Emerald shores when I was 21, but its influence is as firmly stamped on my prose as the exit stamp ink on my passport.
This news article is entitled, "It's like the zombie apocalypse out there." The hyperbole of the title sounds vaguely familiar. It's a funny and uplifting read. It describes the hurricane's expected arrival in Ireland, when all businesses were advised to shut their doors. As it turned out, the hurricane was something of an over-hyped weather no-show, a little bit like my writing.
