You must strive to find your own voice, because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all.
– Prof. Keating (Robin Williams) in Dead Poets Society
In critique groups, writing conference presentations, and books dedicated to the craft, I’ve often seen reference made to “finding your voice.”
Sadly, the description of what that is and instructions on how to do so are all fairly vague–by necessity. Voice is a big part of what sets one author apart from another in writing. But it’s an elusive quality, hard to pin down sometimes, let alone to document in a how-to book. The consensus is, the best way to find it is to write, write, write. And then write some more.
I don’t think I could give a lot of clear, descriptive adjectives about the sound of my wife’s voice. But you can bet I’ll recognize it as soon as I hear it.
One good practice is to look at examples where an author has a particular style that sets them apart. Read how they write, and consider how the word choice and sentence structure create the desired effects.
I somehow missed that Prince Lestat came out at the end of 2013. I picked it up as a travel companion. Very quickly I realized I don’t much care for Anne Rice’s style of writing. In my late teens, I read some of her work and loved it. Now, I deemed it haphazard, a little wordy, with too much rambling for my tastes.
Then again, she’s making money with ease, so who am I to judge? We all like what we like, and she’s clearly got a fan base.
What I did like about the book is that it felt like dropping in on old friends. The chapters written as Lestat sound like that character in my mind… how he would say a thing, how he would interpret events taking place. While I may not like the writing style, the voice shines through.
Another great example is this gem I picked up solely based on a recommendation by Brandon Sanderson in one of his blog posts: The Accidental Highwayman by Ben Tripp.
It’s a madcap adventure through an England on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, with an intrusion of magic into the real world. The “voice” Tripp uses for his characters and their descriptions of his world seem effortlessly perfect. Line after line stands crafted to drop the reader squarely into Kit Bristol’s head, with no cracks or flaws in the writing to jar the reader. It is chaotic and quite silly–no serious thinking required here. Therefore, it probably falls in a “love it or hate it” category. But for a light-hearted jaunt, or a mental break from the demands of the real world, the book serves well.
I now can see that’s more likely the result of dedication and hard work than a gift of luck or genius as a writer. And this gives me hope. Because otherwise I’d read something like his work, declare my inability to match such skill, and go play video games for the rest of my days.
On the day SecDef announced the new U.S. mission in Afghanistan, I hit my 20-year time-in-service mark.
The long-running Operation ENDURING FREEDOM is finished.
We didn’t hear about the change until the 31st, and then only through commercial news media. Everything official assumed we’d be called something else. My deployed crew and I were in the middle of planning the first sortie of the new year, so we went with Chuck Hagel as a pretty good source of guidance.
When we landed, at the end of the day, leadership was still confused about what named operation we supported… because their leadership was still confused. Multiple names floated around. No one had even heard of FREEDOM’S SENTINEL.
It’s frustrating… partly because it makes us all look like bumbling idiots trying to figure out the change, and mostly because the humor of my joke was lost:
We’re the good guys. We have America Lasers.
Sorry, it’s a hastily-done drawing on whiteboard. If you want a good picture, check imgur. I have missions to fly and stuff.
Comic book fans will recognize this as an old-school Sentinel, a giant death robot programmed to find and eliminate mutants like the X-Men. (If you saw the newest X-Men film, modern “cool-looking” Sentinels feature heavily.)
But given that our tasking and guidance remained exactly the same, it’s hard not to feel a sense of “So What?”
An individual on my crew put together this helpful chart that reinforces the point:
(And there’s years of missions flown all around these two countries… but that would get cumbersome if included.)
Sorry, whiteboard again. We had other things to do (or so I’ll maintain).
When I went through Professional Military Education, we had lengthy lessons on Change Management. The idea is, change is hard and scary, which causes people to resist it. So there’s a good way to implement change, and some bad ways to avoid.
If you can make a change known well in advance, you can get your experts on board to figure out how the plan will work. Questions are answered before they’re asked in the heat of the moment; problems are solved before they’re encountered on the flight line. Ideally everyone contributes, and the plan becomes both better and well-known. Then, when leadership says, “Execute the plan,” everyone carries out the change with enthusiasm and support that comes from ownership.
I’ve seen this process go poorly over the last 20 years.
I’ve seen leaders declare sweeping changes without considering what obstacles stand in the way. I’ve seen people ignore regulations governing how we do business, in order to shift to the “new” plan–when no one knows what it is.
Whole squadrons arrived at work wondering “What exactly is it that I’m supposed to do today?”
I sat in a conference room with the leaders of every office in the squadron at a meeting that opened with, “Since the re-organization took effect last week, we’re going to sit down now and figure out how we all fit in to accomplishing the basic mission of this unit.”
That’s a question that maybe could have been answered well in advance.
I left that meeting with a clear understanding of the roles and responsibilities on my shoulders and on my peers. Better yet, I felt equipped to communicate that vision to my subordinates, who had the same questions I did.
I also stepped out of the room and immediately spoke in private with the officers in charge of operations. “Sir, if feedback flows both down and up, then can we make sure the message goes up the chain that what we’ve just done is the exact opposite of everything we teach about how to implement change in an organization?”
To their credit, both officers I spoke with agreed completely and admitted they’d felt the same frustrations. I overheard a conversation with higher-ups where one of the officers I’d spoken to conveyed my feedback and challenged the superior’s mistaken view that creating chaos and thrash in the unit was beneficial, since it would make everyone give 110% to figure out and implement the change.
When I look at this news and how this change has come about, it leads me to believe one of three things:
1) This name change is purely cosmetic. Since it seems nothing fundamental or practical is different from my last OEF sortie to my first “whatever we decide to call this” sortie, I find this very likely.
2) Too few in power care that we do things well–we just need to do things. We teach a right way to implement change that produces ideal effects. But we are often directed to execute the opposite–doing whatever someone higher up the chain desires, at once, regardless of whether its fit existing rules or structures. And asking questions to make sure we’re legal or compliant with standing regs is viewed as a frustration and hindrance. I’m not sure whether that all applies in this situation, but it smacks of the same “rush to change” I’ve seen elsewhere.
3) What I’d hoped was an isolated “one bad apple here or there” case of poor management seems to be a hydra of similar leaders. Ignorance of what’s going on–throughout a squadron, a community, a region, a theater of operations, and so on–that’s going to happen from time to time. But willful ignorance, once an issue is called out, is unacceptable. It’s also called negligence. Or apathy. Or complacency. But definitely not leadership. Again, I’m not sure this directly relates to our changing-but-not-really operations in Afghanistan. But it matches up with past experience.
True leaders realize what they lack, own up to the fault, and then make corrections and adjustments. It’s refreshing to see that happen. Those people stand out from among the drones and yes-men committed only to their own promotion.
We need more Sentinels of that sort, not the robots.
On a deployment six and a half years ago, to a “secret” undisclosed location in Southwest Asia (that everyone knew all about), I picked up some D&D rulebooks to keep boredom at bay.
I read through the rules of the game, and noted some of the authors’ suggestions for ideas players could use for their characters–or Dungeon Masters could use to write stories those characters could star in, like a Choose Your Own Adventure.
And it struck me that no matter how well I planned a story, real live people would make decisions I didn’t anticipate, causing the Adventure to go in any of several exciting ways–but not the way I first envisioned.
So why not write the story the way I wanted to?
I sat under the Memorial Plaza’s massive double-tent (affectionately referred to by most as “the bra” for how it appears from a distance) or at the Coffee Beanery shop across the street, and I began to write.
I’ve written things before, of course. But during my two trips here several years ago, I decided to take writing seriously. Within a couple years of studying novel writing and elements of style, over the course of six plus months deployed (and time writing at home), I’d typed out over 100,000 words of a massive fantasy tale.
But the material borrowed too heavily from genre tropes. It sounded too much like World of Warcraft or Dungeons and Dragons in novel form. It had no unique element to separate it from the rest of the books on any fantasy shelf, along with too many elements I discovered had been done before and better than anything I’d write.
I decided to shelve the thing until I could devise some fixes to all the problems I saw. And I worked on other projects until I found the solutions to those glaring issues.
I regret that decision. It took me six and a half years to develop the discipline to finish a full novel manuscript–not of this fantasy project, just a novel–because I’d learned to give up part way whenever I felt a project had too many flaws.
So here I sit, where I began years ago, halfway through the almost-completely-rewritten manuscript of my long-planned fantasy novel. A lot has changed. Almost everything about the world, the magic systems, and the long-term plan for the story is different than when I first envisioned it. Also, I’m allowed to sit here in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt instead of wearing Air Force PT gear.
Most important, I’ve proven to myself through NaNoWriMo that I can finish what I start, flawed or not.
So this time, I will have a completed draft before I depart for home. I may find my way out here again in the next few years, but I don’t want this novel to come with me for a fourth trip.
There’s no reason I should have to say this. But I do.
I’m disgusted.
Dear all guys anywhere:
After you go into the bathroom and put your hands on or near your junk to do your business, wash your freakin’ hands!
No one wants you touching the bathroom door, or office supplies, or the restaurant table, or other people with your unwashed hands.
Sorry, not sorry. There’s no room for mercy or grace here. You don’t wash your hands afterward? You’re a horrible human being, simple as that.
“Dave, come on, I know some people do that, but is it really so prevalent that you’d waste a blog post on it?”
Yes. It is. I daresay the majority of men who use the bathroom at the same time as me are walking right out the door without touching a drop of water, let alone some soap.
Grossed out? You probably should be.
I know I’m shouting into a storm, peeing into the wind, as they say. I doubt a blog post will change some filthy person’s behavior.
But I can hope.
Until then, there’s always these:
Also great on stuff that’s been touched by people’s junk.
I quite possibly squealed with glee when I saw the Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition Player’s Handbook show up at our local base exchange book store. That meant they should carry the other books when those are published.
It’s here!
I know there’s Amazon, but I still like picking up a physical thing and looking at it before deciding to plunk down my card or cash.
Some of my best-viewed blog posts are about 5th edition. It’s perhaps a trick of the title I chose; certain kinds of players go looking for ideas on how to build the “best” character to “win” at the game, so they’ll search online to see what combinations and tricks others have found within the rules to make (arguably) overpowered characters.
I suppose it’s the D&D version of human growth hormone, and it’s not banned… just frowned upon by some.
Leaving for a deployment plus NaNoWriMo kept me from focusing on setting up the long-awaited game for my family, let alone an actual group of people. But what D&D 5th Edition is doing well is just that: bringing groups of people back together.
Sure, your tabletop group today might bring along their tablets or iPhones for dice apps and fast tracking of information related to the game. The tabletop might even be virtual.
But people are connecting once again, telling stories together, and exploring that wonderful space between our ears. Some fear that in our digital, always-connected, everything-visualized world, there’s little room for imagination and wonder.
Thankfully I find these fears unfounded. My kids play with Legos and bring me their latest creations constantly. They also play Minecraft on the iPad or Xbox. But again, they often show off their wild palaces, deep caverns, and unique structures. They’re exercising and expressing their imagination with ease.
While I don’t fear for them in this area, I do want to encourage them–and their friends–and create spaces for their minds to play in. Because we have that ability to conceive of things beyond ourselves… beyond even the bounds of what we’ve seen or experienced before… beyond what actually exists and into what could.
Maybe that’s not for everyone. Whether the subject is video games, RPGs, or even TV shows and written fiction, I know I’ve heard the judgmental “I don’t waste my time thinking about things that aren’t real.”
How boring.
This article sums it up really well, even if the URL appears to be about something completely different (and super gross):
I’m reblogging this because:
1) several of you are writers who have self-published, or expressed interest in doing so.
2) I’ve seen some self-published things that ought not to have been.
3) I think this will be useful information for me personally in the future.
Bangor, Maine is a popular stop on the itinerary for various trips I’ve taken around the world.
The best aspect of the trip (to me) is that every time I’ve come through, I’ve been warmly greeted by a small assembly of retired military members, veterans and just plain folk with a firm handshake, a smile, and a “Thanks for your service.”
But tonight we showed up after 11 PM, figuring the airport would be closed.
Nope.
Applause and cheers echoed down the hall as my companions and I made our way to the waiting area. Probably a dozen plus men and women stood at the door to catch us as we came in.
After 11 PM.
I’m old enough, even I want to be in bed after 11 PM.
I answered each of them with “Thank you for your service.” Because some of them served–probably at times with harder challenges and more demands placed on them than rest on me. And all of them took the time to come out and show some gratitude to men and women currently serving the nation.
That means something, and it’s worthy of thanks.
There are still grateful people in America, and it’s appreciated.
As I worry about things like “Will I be able to play my online game while I’m away from home?” and “How much money can I save?” it’s important to see that there are so many more pressing concerns…
Both so that I am grateful for what I have that I often take for granted, and so that I might take time to give some of my excess to those who are in need.
At the very least, reblogs are free. And all of humanity must know this.
I’m happy to declare that I’ve validated the rough draft of my NaNoWriMo novel, “Not to the Swift,” and have won the event.
More importantly, I’ve actually completed a start-to-finish draft of a novel.
Up to this point, I’ve had outlines and chapters and scenes from multiple works-in-perpetual-progress, but never a finished draft. So the milestone is particularly exciting to me.
I could have uploaded the 50,000+ words my Friday evening, but the goal for me has been to actually get to a point where I could write two important words: The End.
It’s imperfect, no doubt dreadful in some places. There are scenes missing and plot problems I already realize I need to fix.
But for now I will enjoy the sense of victory.
Because if I can finish this one–about an unfamiliar topic in an unfamiliar genre–then I have no excuses for not knocking out the projects I’m really excited about.
NaNoWriMo has kept me busy. When the WordPress app kept failing to update on my iPad, I found it too easy to blow off posting updates.
Because, hey, why waste words on blogs when I could be pushing toward that magic 50,000 word goal?
Now I’m sitting just past 41K with five full days remaining (plus my Tuesday night here on Okinawa). I have no doubt in my mind I can do this.
When I made a spontaneous commitment to this crazy effort, I had no plot in mind. But the news was full of Ferguson and Mike Brown, accusations and protests and justification on all sides.
I started reading blog posts and immersing myself in the voice of a culture and experience completely unfamiliar to me. And I realized how little time I’ve taken to listen or consider what it might be like to walk in different shoes or live in darker skin.
A story formed in my head, but I didn’t feel adequate to the task. So I hit the library and dug into books and websites documenting a variety of viewpoints and experiences. Beyond the Color Line by Henry Louis Gates Jr. offered me the wide range of perspectives I wanted.
Bloggers delivered some profound insights. My “favorite” blog post on the subject–not because of how it made me feel, since it positively wrecked me emotionally–is found here:
The link Ms. Wilson includes to a similar post about Sean Bell is equally challenging to those of us who haven’t had a conversation with our parents or children about how best to avoid getting shot by police.
That said, I also found gems like this post, called It’s Hard to Keep Caring, in defense of the difficult job and the unheralded but still heroic efforts of the many good and decent human beings serving their communities in police uniforms.
Basically, NaNoWriMo started (for me) as a fun project to see if I could be a better writer.
I’m surprised, humbled, and satisfied to think maybe it achieved something else: maybe it’s forcing me to become a better person.
I found myself writing a poem from the perspective of a hypothetical protester in Ferguson (or one of the other all-too-similar situations over the last few decades).
I don’t know that I’d find myself on a street holding a sign, or putting my hands in the air staring down a riot cop’s gun. But for a moment, I could expand my limited perspective and try to ask, “How would I feel? What would I say in these circumstances?”
Because on my various social media feeds, all I saw–on all sides–was a bunch of groups of “us” talking about “all of them,” vilifying and dehumanizing anyone who disagreed, anyone who looked different.
That’s my takeaway from this project. My goal in the story was to present the idea that black or white, rich or poor, maybe we’re not so different, maybe we all feel similar emotions, deal with similar struggles, and experience similar tragedies.
I doubt I hit the mark all that well. I’ll end up with a rough draft that will probably sit on my computer and go nowhere. Maybe I’ll self-publish.
But my coworker who inspired me to join reminded me, “NaNo is all about trying something new. Go for it, see where it leads.”
Who would have thought compassion and empathy are new concepts?
Judging by the news, I suppose maybe that’s not such a surprise.
My book isn’t finished yet. The book’s not closed on racial injustice and tensions either. Both are pretty rough drafts with some great moments and touching scenes, mixed with a whole lot of crap we’d all probably rather ignore.
But I can only hope that both will be finished, someday soon.
Here’s the poem. I welcome your thoughts:
The dam you’ve cracked could not hold back
A flood of fury, hurt and worry
The history of wrongs built up for so long
The strong walls of patience and appeasement
Burst and shattered, twisted and bent
By six shots fired in supposed self-defense
At an unarmed teen accused of violence
And they act like the evidence all makes sense
But we see right through all the police pretense
To the obvious truth of an innocent youth
So back off your sanctioned brutes in riot gear and jackboots
Your power was never meant to be absolute
You’ve awoken an army with hands up–Don’t shoot.
The home of David M. Williamson, writer of fantasy, sci-fi, short stories, and cultural rants.
