005Voice
I seem to be getting back on my bit of wanting to write something most nights, which I'm finding quite lovely, even if it's probably going to continue fucking up my resolution to Not Write About The Present.
i always have the choice to not post what I write, I guess. But pretending that I'm going to as I write it... helps, somehow.
Anyway, all of that said... I feel like writing, quite strongly. Even if I haven't got a clue yet what I want to write about.
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My narrative voice is all janky and muddled tonight. This is one part because I have been reading a lot of fiction recently, and I wrote a decent chunk of fanfic a few nights ago as well, so I'm all full of metaphor and poetry and flowery excess. Thus the tone and flow of yesterday's post, I think.
The other part of it is that I just finished reading and rereading a bunch of my girlfriend's posts, from months and years ago. Because of that, I can feel the tint of her voice curling around the edges of mine, influencing my word choice and sentence structure.
It's quite a pleasant experience, actually.
I have been thinking recently about the challenge that exists in trying to match someone else's writing style. There's a bunch of reasons to do so - when writing particular characters in a fanfic for example, or when working on a creative project with someone, trying to keep the tone consistent between the two of you.
Then there's the opposite-equal challenge of trying to not let someone else's style affect yours. I'm not bothering right now, choosing instead to let the influence of someone I love dearly colour my words however it wishes... but there have been times when I have rewritten entire posts upon reading them back and thinking, "fuck, this sounds exactly like one of [___]'s posts, I can't publish this."
They do say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery though, for what that's worth.
Recently, I've found myself enjoying the idea of embracing these challenges on purpose, much moreso than usual.
Usually I dread it, and it's one reason why I have 1million story ideas but so rarely follow through on them. I can't write dialogue to save my life, for example, because deliberately shifting my narrative voice into that of a particular character, consistently and smoothly, has always felt like trying to flex a muscle that I can see and touch and observe in my body, but have no conscious control over. I always eventually slip back into sounding like me.
But I've been trying a bit, both with the variety in my recent posts, and the deliberate choice to emulate a particular author when writing that fanfic I mentioned.
I'm not good at it. I am trying to flex a muscle that I have never really used before.
But... I'm not entirely useless at it either. I'm looking forward to sharing my work in a community discord server when I finish it, and hopefully finding out from total strangers whether or not they think I've succeeded.
Honestly, I expect the response will be disappointingly subdued, which somehow scares me more than the idea of fierce criticism. At least criticism is something I can mount a defense against, or better yet, welcome it in where it fits. I can't fight absence, can't react to it, can't learn from it.
But I wanna do this. So I am.
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I don't think I'm finishing this post with any particular moral or thesis. You can probably derive one if you really want to, but whatever you find is almost certainly unintentional on my part. Good thing I'm such a believer in killing the author.
I'm just enjoying writing right now. And that's nice, I think. That will be enough.
💚