Can You Hear Me?
I squinted my eyes in the dim light. My fingers were tired, bruised, darkened by pen marks.
“No. No. No.” I thought, scribbling out the last sentence. This assignment was going to kill me. I hated English class. I absolutely couldn’t stand it. Anyone who thought they could make me write, was sorely wrong. I pushed it off. A week to come up with a story about high school life as a final. It had to be 8-10 pages, front to back on college rule. I mean, who really writes 8-10 pages for an English assignment? Kiss asses, that’s who. Screw it. It wasn’t going to be me. I didn’t need it. I didn’t want it. I just wanted this year to be over with and it was only May.
That was… until I woke up.
The rain beat against the patio glass. The wind beat against the old metal siding of the trailer. My ass was asleep, tingling shooting down my legs and into my feet- that could tell you how long I’d been sitting there. My right arm ached. I tried to rub the feeling back into my fingers and hand. I could hear this girl crying. It wasn’t the soft, pretty crying you watch in movies where the heroine’s eyes get misty and her face turns a blushing pink; but that sad, painful cry that hurt your chest and makes you sob like a grieving widow. It made you want to hide away until it was over. In some ways I knew that that felt like. I had an inkling of how it felt. I rolled over and beat my pillow. It was only a dream, I told myself. Go to sleep. You have a Spanish final in the morning and you suck. Get a grip.
But her cries grew more gut-wrenching. I could hear her in my mind saying how she couldn’t go on. How it was her fault. Then I could feel something wet and sticky on her hands. They became my hands. I was sitting in the middle of the road. The truck was a mangled mess of metal in the ditch. I told him not to drive home. I told him not to get behind that wheel. His head was cradled in my lap, his lips turned into towards my inner thigh. His blood was on my hands, soaked through my shirt and jeans. It coated my arms. It coated my hair. It coated my very heart. His eyes stared up at me, a black soulless void that left me pleading. I trembled as I heard the sirens racing up the road. The breeze fluttered through my hair. Through his hair. And I touched his face so very softly. His cheek was cold underneath my fingertips. “Please,” I said brokenly. “Please don’t leave me here.” And in the distance, over the hill, I could see sirens. The colors blurred together. The blues. The yellows. The reds. Tears clung to my lower lashes even as I wiped them away. My heart hurt so bad. My chest was crushing it. I couldn’t breathe.
I lowered my hand back down to the notebook page and dropped the pen. I sat my elbows on the table and rubbed my hands over my face. It was the middle of the night. I’d been at this for a little over an hour and I still couldn’t get her echoing cries out of my head. Not to mention the tears that smeared my pen marks on the page. I tried to blot them out. Make them go away. But I couldn’t. It was shameful to be so out of control. It was only a story.
I picked my pen up and moved on. The girl’s cries only got louder as I moved through my story. As she struggled to move on after his death. After she went back to school and everyone looked at her differently. She moved through the motions. She didn’t speak. She didn’t trust. She didn’t love. She started to wither away, withdraw. The only saving grace was her best friend, the only person who knew her for her. He tried being nice. He tried giving her space. And then finally he lost his cool and gave her a dose of reality. And then he kissed her. Made her realize that she wasn’t living and from that moment on, she didn’t take anything for granted.
That was how I ended it. I closed my notebook, laid my head down on the table and cried my eyes out.
I turned the paper in the next day and didn’t think about it. It was over the required page limit. It ended up being 20 pages. The longest story I’d ever taken the time to write for class. When I handed it in, the teacher looked surprised and I was quick to duck out. My best friend came up behind me and leaned against the locker beside mine. He asked me what was up with the paper. I shrugged. “Nothing.” I told him.
I didn’t think about it anymore. It was done. It was over with.
The weekend was a blur. Every night was the same for me. A repeat of a broken record playing the same damn tune, with the same words. I hated this life. It was empty. Hollow. Joyless. I went through the motions just wanting to get through it.
Monday in class, the English teacher droned on about some of the papers. She never named names. She didn’t have to. There was a quartet of nerds that always did well. They sat in the front left side. I sat in the back right corner where I could read my novels without interruption. One paper was beyond her expectations. I snorted softly to myself and thought, “And I bet I know who that is.”
When we received grade notes on our papers at the top of mine was “See me after class.” Not the first time I’d gotten one of those. I was an easy target. It was well known I couldn’t stand to write. Anything that had to do with it pissed me off. I remained in my seat after the bell rang; my best friend put his hand on my shoulder before walking down the aisle and out the door. I chewed the inside of my lip and got up. I leaned against her desk and tossed down the note. “You wanna see me?” I asked.
She glanced up at me. My paper was in her hand, red marks scattered all over it like pixy dust. “Did you write this?”
I huffed and leaned away from the desk. Great. “It’s got my name at the top, doesn’t it?”
She gave me the “your dumber than a rock” look and I shrugged my shoulder. I started to feel really uncomfortable. My stomach was flip-flopping like a stormy sea and the inside of my lower lip was becoming bloody.
“Look. I know I shouldn’t have turned this in. I’ll take an F. I don’t care.”
“No,” she pushed the paper in front of me and tapped her finger on the top of it. “This was the best paper in the class. In both classes. A little inappropriate, but… Where did this come from?”
I shrugged my shoulder and scuffed my foot on the floor. I dropped my eyes to the desk top.
“Well when you’re ready to talk-“
I turned and walked out of the class as fast as I could. I didn’t speak for the rest of the week. Not even when she handed back my paper with the A at the top. I swallowed hard when I got into my vehicle and drove home. I hated writing. I hated what had compelled me to write that. And I hated the way it made me feel.
Years ago, I struggled to put words on the page. The demands of high school English to write a light and fluffy paper would stress me out. My voice, I didn’t know then that’s what it was called, wasn’t light and fluffy about puppies and happy endings. It was dark. I had dark undertones and dark imagery. There was always an undertone of sadness, death, destruction, loneliness. I struggled to take it out, but when I thought about it, the undertone became more pronounced. It’s noted several times in red. Trust me. Along with notes on, I couldn’t master the third person. I struggled to stay in one POV. My sentence structuring was horrific. Imagery was surprising. I loved imagery. I once waxed poetic about a bench in the park for two written pages (which back in the day was a lot of words for someone who hated writing). But I gave up on writing because I couldn’t write what I wanted.
So for years and years, I didn’t write. Things change. Sometimes things just sit in the back of your mind and stew about. It’s not always about the voices you hear. Or the POV you’re striving to get across. The characters you build. Or that plot never seen. It’s about the writer’s voice you put into the story. The person behind the story. And it took me years to see that.
How did you learn what kind of voice you had? Can you hear different writer’s voices as your reading?
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42 comments:
I was scrolling down to see who had written this when my eyes glimpsed 'And in the distance, over the hill, I could see sirens'.
That fired my interest, like a book cover on a stall sometimes does, and I read it all while eating my toast.
Sin, I'm glad I did! I can never resist a discourse on mind and motivation and to see the soul of a writer exposed in this way was totally fascinating....toast crumbs in my coffee now!
Somehow you remind me of Pinter but much softer and feminine of course. If you wrote 'Waiting for Godot' I think I would be riveted
Bit disappointed by the sirens though :wink:
Sin - how apt that you are writing about voice on another day when I can hear your voice so clearly!
I think I started to recognize my voice when I started reading back over my old work and thinking it was boring me. I felt like it didn't sound like the story in my head and that I was much sillier than what my story projected, that my writing used to feel kind of stiff.
So, I tried to let that part of me out and relax a little. It's worked much better for me, I think.
*blinking*
What do you say after something like this? Seriously? No words.
I think I found my voice by using my voice - literally. When you're on the radio five hours a day and often find yourself having to fill a minute or two of airtime when you've got nothing to talk about, you learn to tell stories. I'm sure a minute or two doesn't sound like a long time, but try sitting in front of your mirror and talking to yourself for two minutes without stopping. Oh, and make sure what you say is interesting.
I'm assuming that's where my voice came from because when my sister and my mother read my work, they always say they can hear me telling them the story in their heads. The can *hear* my voice. I think that's a good thing. And it would be nice to know something useful came out of all those years of talking to myself.
My voice is irreverent...and sarcastic. And occasionally (very, very occasionally) profound. But that's usually an accident.
I'd say Yount & Isaac would say my voice is funny with a happy ending. It didn't matter what the assignment was about, there would always be a guy who came into the scene, noticed the nerdy girl, and they kissed at the end. Always. A girl always needs a sidekick: a hunky, t-shirt wearing, woman-eating grinned sidekick. Preferably named Luke or something.
Love the story, Sin!
Sin, the only way to describe your blog is "enthralling." :-)
I found my "voice" in college. I learn by listening to the information given by whomever, taking it in, applying it to my life, and then rehashing it out again. Since this learning style centers around my experiences, this technique involves my family and their stories, too. It got to the point where I was always telling a story, and luckily my professors and classmates enjoyed my stories. I was constantly being told that I needed to write down my stories and make sure that I wrote them as I told them. (Shut up, Terri. LOL!) So, I am. Finally.
Hellion - I think your voice sounds just like you, though we haven't met in person yet, that's how I expect you to be. :) Though, I admit to believing you're profound more often than just occasionally.
Thanks everyone!
I'm a little swamped at work. So I'm going to be replying as much as possible.
PS. Hellion. Very funny. My best friend in high school was Luke. LOL
Q, darling. It's always a pleasure you wrap you up in my world for a while. I get enjoyment out of reading your comments. Thank you for the wonderful compliment. Except I hope I'm a little bit prettier in your mind than Pinter. LOL
Ter- I dunno. The blog got away from me last night. I was going to go on topic of character voices, but I sat down to the laptop and just put my fingers on the keyboard. That's what came out. Been a long time since I thought about that. But I should've realized then that I wasn't going to be a historical writer. Or a fluffy writer. I just didn't get it as a kid.
It's a good thing when people read your stuff and hear your voice. That's awesome! As I've said before, I can't imagine being on the radio. I hate the way my voice sounds.
Marn- Sometimes my voice just wanders around like a free spirit. LOL
I agree with relaxing. You can't fit yourself into a mold just because. You have to be able to place yourself there. And a voice is something that comes natural.
I think I'm still struggling to find my voice.On a good writing day I call it poignant plush. I have a bite of angst to my voice, but I always provide an eventual soft landing.
Lisa - I love that!
I have found a slight negative about finding my voice. Now I'm having trouble writing academic papers. LOL! I have to take the voice back out and be all academic and that used to be easy but I wrote a paper recently that was horrible. It was as if I was just having a conversation with someone. I didn't even remember to put citations through the paper. LOL!
Sin - heaven's you don't need to apologize for something this powerful. You always amaze me and make me jealous that I'll never get that deep POV the way you do. I'm just glad we get to read these things and you don't delete them before we do. :)
Hellion- I love your voice! I love to read your stuff because everyone has distinct voices in my head from your writing.
MistyJo! It's a gift to find your voice early on in life. Sometimes we just don't think to use it. I'm so glad you're writing!
I might have blushed a little bit from your compliment. You're sweet.
Lisa, your voice has always been very haunting. It's powerful to think of someone who has the ability to leave you thinking about a story after you finish it and you have that ability babe.
I never delete. I have a folder filled with stuff I hate. Deleting should be outlawed because as soon as you delete something, you wish you had it back.
Thank you Terrio:)
Sin you're too kind, maybe with practice and time I'll get there.
Sin: are you kidding me about the Luke thing? *LOL* That's too weird.
Terri: I used to get notes like that all the time on my college essays "Too colloquial! I wish you'd take this assignment more seriously. A-" I mean, how could you take the English classes seriously? Wasn't it enough the professor clearly took it that seriously? I bet the WRITERS of those works didn't take themselves nearly as seriously as the professors did. Crazy.
Marnee: Awww, thanks. Yes, I'm very sarcastic and...er...funny in person. And only profound when drinking beer.
Q: *hands him a bottle of scotch*
Hellion is hilarious all the time. Even when she's drunk. *remembering the theater fiasco*
Nope. I swear it. Luke lives in Alaska now. I still talk to him once or twice a year when he's on land.
Hellion is just like her writing. Exactly. LOL!
And this is a paper for a science class. There can be no first person. It's writing a paper where you're talking AT the reader instead of TO the reader. Not much fun at all.
I haven't written a paper in ages. Even in my last year of college, I didn't have papers. I have software finals and computer skills. But no papers. Thank goodness. LOL I can't imagine writing a paper on the way to put a computer together or how a processor actually works. LOL Or how exactly my fingers move fast enough to type 100+ a minute. The hardest part was voice recognition software. Teaching the computer to recognize you. Brutal.
Goodness, I'm always writing papers. But then I couldn't program a computer to save my life and don't want to learn. Next spring I'll have to write my final paper and y'all are going to want to kill me with all the whining I'm sure I'll be doing.
I hate science with a passion (sorry Q!) so this one required science class has been brutal. None of it makes sense. I could take advanced Greek and be in the same boat. As I told the teacher, I don't care how things work. I know there are other people who know how they work and that's good enough for me.
I used to write papers, you know; and they weren't in first person. I do write in 3rd person (just not as well). Fortunately though as an English and History major, BS is predominant. I always though I should have gotten a BS degree, not a BA/AB. Though there is an art to BSing.
"Seems" and "Appears" are your buzzwords as an essay writer. Don't make any confirmed statements. Talk like a politician; then back up your "seems" statement with 3 references (don't want an overkill), while being sure not to overload your paper with more quotes than "seems" writing. After all, you have to make it appear like you know what you're talking about--and you can't do that if you're quoting more than writing. But it's easier to write a literature paper than a science one. (Okay, maybe not, I used to do GREAT on my papers in college, but I remember helping one of my student workers with her paper--and she still got a B- on it. I was ticked. Of course, she was thrilled about it.)
I'm trying to remember the last science class I took. I took a history of science, which was easily more interesting than every science class I took up until that point...but I think the last science-science class was...wow, I was a freshman in college. I remember now. Because I was an hour short in math or science, and I elected to take the math instead because I'd rather be set on fire than do physics or chemistry. I don't remember us doing papers in that class. It was a science for dummies...and I don't think he wanted to tax our limits.
*laughing at Terri* What did the teacher say when you told him that!? *LOL* That's something I'd say.
This is the class with the hippie chick prof so she just thanked me for my honesty. LOL! The thing is, if it was just spewing facts, I can do that. But this is a Humanities science class so it's all "pick a topic from these four chapters and tell me how it works in your everyday life." And those topics are like electromagnetic waves and astronomy and heat conduction. That's like asking me to cook with a wok.
Sin, I'm speechless. What a riveting blog.
Voice? I don't know what mine is. I write historicals, love imagery and have to watch out not to overuse it. My stories are dark. But what does that mean? A few contest judges have suggested I have a literary voice. POO! That's not what I want to write. I've tried hard to adjust. Still, I ask, what does it mean? I'll scream it out to the gods.... what's the deal?
Someone pass me a friggin' bone here. (Austin Powers)
*LOL* Poor Kathy, I don't know if you can adjust your voice. I think you have to roll with it. It doesn't mean if your voice is more literary that your story can't be engaging and have a happy ending. Maybe it just means you have a better vocabulary than a lot of us. :)
Don't electromagnetic waves run your microwave? I mean, clearly that would be your everyday life, wouldn't it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave
I had to look it up. If microwaves run by ocean waves, and everyone else knew that, I was going to feel like an idiot.
This hippie teacher of yours amuses me.
Kathy - I'll second that POO! (Watch where you step today.) Hellion is right, that just means you write intelligent stuff. Nothing wrong with that. You go on with your bad pirate self.
Hellion - then I would have to explain HOW electromagnetic waves work inside the microwave. I would rather, as you say, be set on fire. I think I ended up writing about how the heat moves through my walls and why my apartment is always cold. It was still cold that week.
Kathy, look at it as a highly paid compliment. They at least recognize your voice. You have one. There's gotta be a good way to showcase that talent to make you feel good about your voice. Just your comments showcase your voice. There's an edge to your voice that makes someone stop and read. I like that about you.
Another terrific blog, Sin! I could hear those sobs.
I spent my early writing years wanting Emily Dickinson's voice. I got over longing for the impossible, but the influence stayed with me. That's probably why "lyrical" is a comment I get frequently about my voice. But I try not to think about voice too much. I fear what self-consciousness can do.
Janga, I'm an Emily Dickinson fan myself. I could never get anywhere close to have that lyrical voice. You shouldn't be self-concious about your voice. You can develop it more, but your voice is your voice. It's beautiful no matter what.
I have an edge? Is it the edge of a cutlass or a peg leg? LOL. Thanks, Sin. You made my day!
Whew! Thanks to Hellion for helping me post to the blog again. Me ship was starting to sink from all me tears.
Unless you're Gilbert Godfrey. His voice...not so beautiful.
But Janga's writing is lyrical...and gorgeous! (But it makes me think of Marsha Moyer rather than Emily Dickinson...but I can see the draw. "Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me...")
I suppose the point I was trying to convey in my blog and didn't get close to was that voices are something you have to learn to love. It's like looking in the mirror every day and hating what you see, but someone sees the beauty in your eyes. That bright shining light that is portrayed when you talk about something you love. A writing voice is like that. You have to learn to love and accept yours before anyone else can. And it's a part of learning how to write the way you were meant to write.
As The Cap'n handed me the bottle may I offer a toast "to joyful voices everywhere....bottoms up"
I can't stand it!
The ignorance of basic science among some romance writers both amuses and appals.
The universe is full of electromagnetic waves!They are everywhere. They carry the info in your radio, TV and Telephone. The inside of your head is buzzing with them and they may be closely involved with consciousness. Even your heart generates these waves. And don't forget the microwaves, radio waves, x-rays, gamma-rays and light waves arriving from space to say nothing of artificial light, sun ray lamps, hospital scanners.....the list is endless and, trust the Cap'n to think of food, the microwave oven.
OK rant over. I blame it on the teachers. Leading edge science is all about discovery and is so incredibly exciting that few top notchers want to be bothered with teaching basics. The subject is consequently badly presented unless you happen to have an inspirational teacher.
If I had half an hour of your time, I'm sure that I could demonstrate that science is good for you and perhaps convince you to learn more or at least marry a scientist to teach you more. Better understanding of how the universe ticks might even expand your horizons plot-wise and give you an edge in the cutthroat romance market place.
There might also be other benefits but I prefer not to reveal those. :lol:
I'm sure there was some English in there somewhere but you lost me after the toast. I caught back up at the benefits part. That sounds interesting.
But the rest is all gibberish. LOL!
Awesome, Sin! I was riveted... and I knew it was you! I'm getting to know everyone's voice here and it's kinda neat to play the guessing game before you get to the siggy line!
I don't know if I have a voice or not. I know if I do have one it's probably on the lighter side. I would look back at my early stuff and think it was kind of Polyanna-ish, but I'm not sure whether that's cause I was like that then and I've grown or not. I can be sarcastic, but more so in person than in my writing. It's an interesting subject to ponder.
Sin - that was amazing!
I do hear an author's voice when I am reading a book. I think more so now in this era of cyber exchanges and, most certainly, since I've met some of my favorites and found their 'ways' to be reflected in their work.
As to my own voice and especially in this particular manuscript I found my voice early on. I am writing about things that are in my life on a daily basis so it is very close to who I am. I did have to distill it in the beginning to take away the historical reader in me.
Irish- sometimes the road to find our voice is the hardest one to take. I'm sure you have a voice. You have to develop it for it to get stronger. I never knew I had a voice until a couple of years ago and someone wrote me a review which told me "you have a strong voice" and I wrote back, "No. Actually I sound like a six year old on helium." LOL
My writing isn't nearly as sarcastic as I am. I guess maybe that's something that has to be developed as well.
Santa I'm so glad you found your voice early on and knew what to look for in your manuscript! Sometimes I have a hard time taking out the historical sentence structuring. LOL. I read a lot of historicals and you can tell I've read a historical when you read some paragraphs. It's hard to weed that out. When I read it back to myself, I hear myself narrate it. But when you read it, you hear something totally different. It's just fascinating to me.
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