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Voice is a real struggle for me when I am writing. I feel like I move from the lyrical trying to write like an Indian writer to the more formal prosaic non-fiction writer. It leaves me confused about what I am doing, and neither is done well.
Having recently read Obama’s first memoir, I was inspired and found myself wanting to write in a voice and style similar to his. To put it simply, he writes by first describing what was happening, and then follows it with an analysis of what he was feeling or thinking then. Then he weaves those pieces through the framework of race and legacy.
I also find myself influenced by the voice of Hitchens and Steinbeck, to write to say what I have to say without flourish. But I my writing has neither the wit of Hitchens nor the craft of Steinbeck. True that those are ambitious footsteps to try to walk in, but one had to aim high to get somewhere useful.
Finding voice has been a struggle for me when I used to write when I was younger. I began writing by aping the styles of those who most influenced me then. Attempts to write like Lawrence, Hardy, Orwell, Welsh, and Kerouac were all just bad facsimiles of them. I did not even attempt Rushdie or Mistry – feeling that their styles were too far from my voice.
I stopped write non-academic work when I was 25 — 15 years ago. When I started my academic voice was as expected – pompous and affected. Over the years, its got better as I have got more confidence in what I have to say. Writing to explain complex ideas to students, especially for those non-native English speakers, has been a good exercise in focused and clear writing. I still have a tendency to over-write, but that is usually motivated to be as explicitly clear as possible.
I do think that I am a better editor than a writer, having helped many friends with their writing. My editing strengths are structure, flow and clear writing. So thats the approach I think I might have to take with this project. Get bunches of text down, and then try to structure them into a narrative.
But there is still the issue of the conceptual string for the entire work that I have not sorted.
(More on that next post)