Finding My Voice
This is a repost from another blog. Originally posted March 28th, 2004:
I have read almost everything by Nick Hornby. The man is one of my favorite authors (Kurt Vonnegut being my absolute favorite of all time). The reason I mention him is because in the Thunder Road chapter of SongBook he writes about how he eventually “found his voice” as an author by strongly identifying with another author (Anne Tyler in her book Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, to be precise). It was like an epiphany moment for him, when he was suddenly able to see himself in what he read.
As he puts it:
“This is me,” I wanted to say when I read Tyler’s rich, sad, lovely novel. “I’m not a character, I’m nothing like the author, I haven’t had the experiences she writes about. But even so, this is what I feel like, inside. This is what I would sound like if I ever were to find a voice.” And I did find a voice, eventually, and it was mine, not hers; but nevertheless, so powerful was the process of identification that I still don’t feel as though I’ve expressed myself as well, as completely, as Tyler did on my behalf then.
I thought I had felt that connection – and I suppose in a way I did – with the authors who have written books that have in some way inspired me (in addition to Hornby and Vonnegut, there are Douglas Coupland, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Elizabeth Wurtzel and Milan Kundera). I don’t love every single book by every single one of them – and, in all honesty – I haven’t even read every single book by every single one of them. But each one produced at least one work, one novel, or one essay that made me feel like I was reading something that had been born in my own imagination.
However, none of the things by these authors I have mentioned have ever spurred me on to try to identify and develop my own voice. In fact, after re-reading the books that inspired me so much, I find that my writing is often forced – as if I’m trying to mimic the style of the author I have just read. Instead of feeling like I have created something that was my own, I often end up feeling like a phoney… a fraud…. like I have no business trying to produce anything of my own.
Yesterday, though, it happened. And it happened in a way that I had never expected it would happen… it happened at a movie.
I had read the script to Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind before I saw the movie. I liked what I read and knew I would see the movie (because, lets face it – weird, quirky, independent films are just my bag, baby), but I felt that it had a lot of work that needed to be done to it. The story just felt “off” somehow.
It was the movie, though – seeing the actual movie in its final state – that some how turned something on in my imagination. No, I wasn’t any of the characters in that film. No, I can 100% guarantee that I had not experienced anything like what was going on in the story. But the emotion – that was all me. I suddenly knew exactly what Nick Hornby was talking about. Eternal Sunshine was the visual depiction of the crazy, mixed-up world going on inside of me. I understood every single plot twist and change made to the story (if you read the script and see the movie, you’ll know what I’m talking about). I was right in step with every artistic decision. I was seeing me – only there was nothing on screen that would directly translate to me.
I wanted (hell, I still want) to laugh and cry and scream and let someone know what was going on. I could suddenly envision pages upon pages of the story I’ve been trying to tell for 10 years written. I could suddenly see why all my previous attempts at telling this story had failed. I was watching this movie, but I was seeing my own story playing side by side along with it. It was the epiphany I never knew I needed, and I had it in the middle of a crowded movie theater.
So, I came home and I started to write. Longhand on a steno pad at first, because TPO had bogarted the computer, and once he was off, I stayed up till 6am clacking away at the keyboard, wishing to God that I could type faster to get all of the ideas out of my head before they drifted away.
And these words I’ve typed, they are mine. This is not me mimicking something I’ve seen or read. I do not feel like a phoney or a fraud. This voice belongs to me – I’ve found it finally.
I just had to share that.
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