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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

voice

Authentic You: Find Your YOU {Day 5}

October 4, 2013 By Michelle

Not long after I started blogging I came across Ann Voskamp’s blog A Holy Experience, and I was instantly smitten with her gorgeous photography and her poetic words. I aspired to write like Ann Voskamp. She was my muse and my model.

It didn’t take long for my prose to begin to sound a teeny bit like Ann’s. Subconsciously I began to imitate her style and voice. I dropped articles like “a” and “an” and “the.” I started to use more fragments. I tried to make my writing more lyrical — I wanted my sentences to pulse with emotion like hers. I wanted my posts to be evocative, deep and spiritually dense.

The problem with this, of course, was that I stopped writing like me and I started trying — failing, of course — to write like Ann. And you and I both know there’s only one Ann Voskamp.

What I didn’t know then (and still, on some days, struggle to know now), is that there’s also only one Michelle, too. And each of us — Ann and I and you, too, my friend — has a God-given role and our own, unique calling to pursue and fulfill.

I still grapple with my voice. I still fall into the trap of thinking maybe I should try to write like someone else – someone who has more readers or more “Likes.” I’ll read an intriguing “How To” post by a well-known writer, and I think, “Maybe I should write more how-to posts.” I’ll read someone like Shelly Miller or Amber Haines or Kelli Woodford and I’ll think, “Maybe I should be more poetic.” Some days I think I should write fancier. Other days I think I should be funnier. Still other days I think I should be more Jesus-y.

Thankfully, although I do doubt and stray, I always come back to my own voice. I’m a concrete kind of writer. I describe what’s happening in the here and now. I don’t usually fancy it up with eloquent language or evocative imagery. It’s how I talk, too — fairly frank, without a lot of fluff in between. It’s how my whole extended family talks – we get straight to the point. [just ask Brad]

Turns out, according to Paul, this straight-talk might serve a purpose. “So if you speak to people in words they don’t understand, how will they know what you are saying?” Paul asks the Corinthians. “You might as well be talking into empty space.” (1 Corinthians 14:9, NLT).

Paul is talking about the gift of speaking in tongues, but I say the message applies to writing styles as well.

Poetry speaks to some, straight-talk to others. We’ve each been given a unique voice to reach different people, working together in the Body of Christ.

I believe it’s important, even necessary, to try on different voices as a writer, even to emulate other voices. The process helps us find our own authentic voice. I might not have come back to concrete me if I hadn’t first gone all Voskampy. I might not have realized I’m a conversational writer if I hadn’t first dressed my words in lyricism.

This whole writer-voice thing is a little like fashion. Sometimes you have to experience with different fashion styles before you settle into your own groove. For the longest time, I wanted to have an edgy style — all New York City, kind of funky, kind of cool. My sister’s that way – she dresses cool.

But the truth is, I’m a preppy at heart. I’ve always been a preppy. I could make a lip piercing look preppy.

So I dress preppy and I write concrete.

I know I’m talking about writing and fashion here, but what I’m also getting at is this: who are you at your core? What is the essence of you? How did God make you and what is it that makes you unique?

Go ahead, try on different voices, different styles. Go New York City edgy. Try on fancy or funny. But if it doesn’t fit, if it doesn’t feel right, take it off. Don’t keep on the mask, the costume. Don’t keep trying to be someone you’re not. Because God made you YOU for a very good reason.

[Next week we’re going to talk a little about David, because he’s got something to tell us about this topic, too.]

What about you? If you’re a writer, how would you describe your voice? And how did you uncover it? Or tell me about your fashion style – preppy? Funky? Edgy? Have you ever tried another style, only to realize it just didn’t fit who you are? {lots of questions – sorry!}

 

Filed Under: 31 Days to an Authentic You, Ann Voskamp, voice, writing Tagged With: 31 Days to an Authentic You

Crying over Candy Land

April 11, 2012 By Michelle


A couple of years ago an agent turned me down after he read my query letter and a couple chapters of my manuscript. After I received the rejection, I responded to his email with a question: “So is it the lack of platform, the quality of the writing…or both?”

He answered quickly. “To tell you the truth, Michelle, it’s both. You don’t have a strong enough platform yet, but the bigger issue right now is your voice. Your writing is okay, but your voice needs work.”

Staring at that terse reply on my computer screen, I felt like I’d been flattened by a steamroller. Fourteen times.

“Okay? Okay!? My writing is ‘okay’?” I ranted at the computer. “Two years it took me to write this stupid book, and you tell me it’s okay?! Are you kidding me?!”

After the tantrum subsided I promptly burst into tears, and wept soundlessly through three straight games of Candy Land with Rowan (who didn’t notice – or perhaps he thought I was weeping over my inability to move past the Gumdrop Mountains).

The problem with the manuscript, I learned later after I paid to have it professionally edited, was that there were two voices vying for control: the personal, memoirish voice and the instructional voice. The two voices didn’t play well together. Just when the reader hit a comfortable groove with the personal voice, which was humorous, self-deprecating and a little bit irreverent, I switched to the instructional voice, which was scholarly and delved into Biblical exegesis. The switching was unsettling to the reader, according to my editor.

In my heart, I knew he was right. In fact, my best friend had told me as much months earlier, when she admitted she’d put the manuscript down when she got to the Bible parts and “had trouble picking it back up again” (another steamroller-flattening moment). I could have saved myself a few hundred dollars in editing fees, but I hadn’t been ready to hear that truth then. 

“Writers worry a lot about this, about voice. They are always wondering if they have one, and if not, how they can find one,” writes L.L. Barkat in her book, Rumors of Water. “The truth is that every writer has a voice. It is probably best heard by listening to oneself speak.”

A completed manuscript and 713 blog posts under my belt, and I still worry about voice. As I prepare to begin a second book, that same editor’s comments from an email he sent me recently ring in my head:  “The strength of the first book was how you wove truth and humor into a natural, engaging writer-voice.”

“Great,” I think when I read his email. “Now I have to be funny. No pressure there.”

Fingers poised over the keyboard, frantic questions bubble to the surface: What if this new book isn’t supposed to be funny? What if it’s serious? What if I don’t feel funny anymore? What if I don’t have a voice if I don’t use my “truth and humor” voice?

Always a glass-half-empty, it didn’t occur to me until just recently that perhaps I have more than one writer-voice. After all, according to Barkat, if I listen to myself speak, I’ll discover my voice. I don’t always use self-deprecating humor and irreverence when I talk; I have a serious side, too. So it stands to reason that I can find that serious writer-voice when I need it.

As I’ve hemmed and hawed over all this in the last couple of weeks I’ve reached one conclusion: there’s no better way to find my voice, again, than to start writing. Again. In the end, sometimes we have to trust the process and have faith that something good will (eventually) come out of it. Sometimes the voice begins to speak clearly along the way.The key is simply to begin.

I’m joining Lyla and the folks over at Tweetspeak for the Wednesday discussion of Rumors of Water. Click over for more thoughts on voice.

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Filed Under: L.L. Barkat, voice, writing and faith

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a Triple Type A, “make it happen” (my dad’s favorite mantra) striver and achiever (I’m a 3 on the Enneagram, which tells you everything you need to know), but these days my striving looks more like sitting in silence on a park bench, my dog at my feet, as I slowly learn to let go of the false selves that have formed my identity for decades and lean toward uncovering who God created me to be.

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