Use Your Voice, Part I
Posted on Wednesday, November 28, 2018 at 10:40 PM
It is the writer who gives words life and meaning.
By Peter P. Jacobi
In Editors Only's most recent issues, I shared with you the content of a keynote address I gave to writers attending a Highlights Foundation workshop for nonfiction writers. The topic was suspense, used in its various guises. The point: Suspense can strengthen your writing, and its employment ranges far wider than you might think.
I mentioned along the way that I gave two keynotes, one for each of two groups gathered. So, this time around, I will highlight details from the other presentation, which has to do with the multifaceted benefits of voice. Let me get on with it.
No, it's not a new subject for me in these columns. Nor should it be. It is a repeat sort of subject, one that requires attention on a periodic basis for new readers as well as those of us who've been around but need reminding, not only for ourselves as editors but ourselves as writers and ourselves as mentors. If you find things familiar in what I tell you, so be it. I'm not apologizing. I'm saying: good. The lesson benefits from re-appliance and recirculation and repetition.
Without You, the Writer, Words Are Just Words
I initiated this lecture, as I did the other of last summer, through music, on this occasion with a short scene from a story familiar to most or all of you, either through the Peter Shaffer play Amadeus or director Milos Forman's film adaptation. Play and film are part nonfiction, based on the life of the immortal Mozart, and they are part fiction, serving up doubtful elements about the historic feud involving the young, up-and-coming Mozart and the older, then-more-established rival, Antonio Salieri.
Though Mozart, in those early Vienna years, was probably troublingly childlike, having been pampered by his doting parents while the prodigy grew up, he was not the pugnaciously childish personality often pictured in Shaffer's interpretation. And Salieri, though desperately envious of his rival's rising fame and disgusted by Mozart's against-accepted-custom behavior, was apparently not quite the devious villain as shown in the film. Both men have been somewhat vilified and, perhaps, even libeled.
Their relationship, however, was testy to be sure. And we see it in the scene I showed, one in which Mozart gains the spotlight, negatively from a man of political and religious power, the Archbishop of Salzburg in whose employ he was, positively from idolizing fans.
As the scene unspools, we hear Salieri's voice. He is looking at a score on a music stand, or is it a keyboard? Can't be sure, often as I've seen the scene play out. "It started simply enough," notes Salieri, looking at the score while listening to it being played, "just a pulse in the lowest registers -- bassoons and basset horns -- like a rusty squeezebox ... And then suddenly, high above it, sounded a single note on the oboe. It hung there unwavering, piercing me through, till breath could hold it no longer, and a clarinet withdrew it out of me, and sweetened it to a phrase of such delight it had me trembling."
Scientists tell us music is nothing more than a sequence of sound waves. How come that combination of sound waves struck a jealous Salieri so deeply?
The answer lies in what the title of my talk implies: "Without you, nothing matters ... without you, nothing matters."
The "you" in this case is the "he," Amadeus, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: his genius, his imagination, his craft, his ideas, his self, his individuality, that something within him, or set of somethings, that separates him from all others, just as your genius [dear reader of this column, dear listener to my lecture], your imagination, craft, ideas, self, and individuality separate you from all others. Tell yourself, as you work, and tell others who make contact with you as writers or editors or readers: "Without you, nothing matters."
What's in a Word?
One hears the question: "What's in a word?"
Come to think of it, a lot, but also nothing. Words are inert. Words do not animate themselves. They are raw materials that must be activated, energized, sculpted, and paired into content, into colors and rhythms, into melody and harmony, into links, into worlds of meaning.
It is the writer who gives words life and meaning, just as the musician does to single sounds, just as the painter does to dot or swatch. Again, words do not animate themselves. They must be forced into life, given birth like a baby, in form and spirit, and nurtured. What you are able to contribute to the basic substance of words makes all the difference. What you are willing to contribute through courage and creative energy makes all the difference.
It is you who makes the baby laugh or cry, squirm, take milk, fill diapers, clutch an adult finger, sleep. You give it being with how you prestidigitate words. You take possession of the word and the words as they are gathered and bunched. You give it, them, voice. Voice is what we're getting at in this conference coming-together: the presence of you in your writing.
Embrace Your Voice
Voice means releasing the you in your writing. Voice means locating and making use of and encouraging and honoring your individuality by allowing it to invade your manuscript. Know that because it is you who are wading into the thickets of a new assignment, you have the opportunity to inject it with what only you can bring to the task: your mind (how you think and imagine), your heart (the belief system that guides you, the views that motivate you, the principles that stir your blood), your background (from which and where you sprang, who raised you and how), your personality (the sum of mind, heart, background, personality uniting in one human being, one body and soul). The mix is yours alone, the garden that has been your existence.
Consequently, the flower that is your talent will differ from that of others. This becomes significant, if you have the courage to let yourself be you when you plan, prepare, and put into words your feature or essay or short story or novel or poem or play or news story, whatever your preferred genre, whatever your goal. Welcome and nurture and come to live comfortably with your voice.
We'll expand and explore the elements of and the opportunities that exist in one's voice next month. I have much more to pass along.
Peter P. Jacobi is a Professor Emeritus at Indiana University. He is a writing and editing consultant for numerous associations and magazines, speech coach, and workshop leader for various institutions and corporations. He can be reached at 812-334-0063.
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