Voice

[To clarify the previous entrette, I was not attempting to portray Trombone as a pretentiouser-than-thou, port-sipping, beret-wearing dork. In re-reading I realized that might have been how it came across. He also displays hearty interest in thrashy crap-rock, the drummier the better, as well as harmonicas. I take no responsibility for these latter personality quirks. That’s why he has a mother AND a father.]

This is My Brain with Time on its Side
I realized as I read the poems out loud that I hadn’t read poetry out loud in a long, long time and that truly, the beauty in good poetry is in its out-loudness. This may be why my own poetry and writing in general, regardless of its quality or merit, has never gone anywhere beyond my notebooks, computer and people I trust. I have always felt vaguely stupid reading things aloud in a serious fashion. (Yet I do enjoy the sound of my own voice. I know you are surprised by this, especially given that you are currently reading my personal weblog.) I will happily read you interesting bits of trivia from the paper, perform a running commentary of billboards on the highway while you’re driving, interrupt your thoughts with funny paragraphs from other peoples’ ‘blogs. But read [a story, poem, ‘blog entry] I wrote out loud? Unthinkable! I have always used the following excuse: I am an introvert (in recent years I have started to think I may just be a passive-aggressive extrovert) and one of the reasons I write is so I don’t have to talk so stop pressuring me, dammit, my Art is Complicated, I love/hate it, now I’m going to be Alone.

To say that this attitude has adversely affected my writing is akin to saying “Tyra Banks LOVES Tyra Banks!” By abandoning my words to languish 2-dimensionally on the page, I can’t see their flaws, I am an ineffective self-editor and ultimately, nothing I write is ever going to be good enough to try to publish. Reading your own work out loud is the best way to hear what it sounds like. No, most people don’t read books of short stories to themselves on the bus and thank heavens for that. But staring and staring and staring at words on a page, when they are words you put on the page in the first place, does not help in the writing process. You end up either hating the words real bad or loving them too much. Either way, the work goes nowhere.

A few years (uh, like, 12 years?) back, I wrote primarily poetry and attended open mic night every week and watched people perform their own poetry while I scribbled in my notebook and drank coffee and when people asked me why I didn’t read offered the excuse referenced above which only served to heighten my mystery thus working in my favour; people believed I was a creative genius because I was anti-social in a social setting, didn’t share my work and drank a lot of coffee and because people believed in the mysterious creative genius of me, I sure as hell wasn’t going to disabuse them by sharing my notebook scribblings and have them all say Wow, know what? She sucks! No WONDER she doesn’t share her work! so I kept scribbling, never shared and instead of putting energy into making my writing better, I spent my energy maintaining the image of myself as a writer. It becomes second nature to do this, but eventually you’re meant to have something to show for all that scribbling and hey, wait, I have this weblog! Awesome.

More importantly, through all those years when I was surrounded by creative types and a perfect, non-threatening way to share what I wrote, I never took the opportunity to allow feedback, the other necessary ingredient to help a person grow as a writer.

To sum up: reading out loud is good, I’ve missed poetry, my history as a writer is a lot like hanging out in a circular vacuum and I could really use a dedicated editor. Instead of wishing those last two weren’t true, I am going to go have a shower and then we’re heading off to the library book sale and the Pumpkin Patch sponsored by our neighbourhood real estate agent. Free hot chocolate! Free pumpkins! Free stimulation for the baby! Maybe even free houses!