Hi all! Rounding out the month with some craft questions submitted by Instagram followers. If you, too, have a question for a future post about books/writing or sign language/deaf culture, you can respond to this email.

1. Is there a more inclusive term for “voice” in writing?

   I have a few thought about this one. On one hand, I think it’s okay for us to use “voice” in the metaphorical sense to describe the inner monologue or exterior dialogue of a character, or the vibe of a story. On the other, I’ve been a new writer obsessing about whether or not I, a deaf person, would ever be able to write coherent dialogue if I couldn’t read it back aloud like Stephen King said I should. Which is to say, writing is hard and scary for everybody, and starting out can be particularly hard and scary, and double so for marginalized folks, so if we can tweak our language to make that process more inviting or accessible, I’m here for that.

   I also think it’s a more involved task than just swapping out the actual word “voice” for something else. The creative writing world has developed lots of shorthand for the feedback we give one another, which is fine…provided the people to whom we are giving the feedback are also getting the definition. Inclusive practice, like good prose, isn’t about watering down or generalizing—it’s about specificity and the opening of worlds. What do we actually mean when we reference a story’s “voice”? The way the narrator and/or characters choose specific words to reveal personal information about themselves or the world, like age, gender, race, class, locale, level of education, level of reliability, interests/obsessions, peeves/hatreds, and more, without necessarily saying those things outright. What does the narrator notice or not notice? What details do they give us, or leave out, and why those? That’s voice to me.

   

2. Do you have a words per day goal or writing schedule? Writing software?

   This is actually a composite question, but I think these go together under “productivity.” Truth be told, my life is medium chaos right now, a highs-and-lows amalgam of family health issues, IEP season, small children in general, One Book One Philly Palooza, creative projects on all the burners, the existential terrors of a world aflame, etc. Tis the season of stealing time. Writing in late-stage capitalism can be a privilege, and protecting a writing schedule from said family responsibilities, health crises, and day job hours a task unto itself.

   
   Right now, I try to write as much as I can when the kids are at school. I try to do it before I start answering one million emails, which doesn’t always work. Sometimes I write after the kids go to bed. Sometimes I write in my head, turning a paragraph over again and again until I’ve memorized it. Highly recommend shower writing.
   
   So, things are all over the place for me right now, but in other life seasons, I do appreciate a more regular writing schedule, mostly because I feel kind of physically gross when I don’t write. I will be participating in the great Jami Attenberg’s upcoming #1000WordsOfSummer as much as possible, because I’ve found that to be a really great tool with which to push myself to write in a more uninhibited way (typically, I’m really slow and picky).

   As for writing software—no! 😅 Not because I haven’t tried. Scrivener appeals. Especially for the memoir, with all the research. Ultimately I think it is less a matter of me being technologically challenged (though that’s not totally off the mark) and more about my inherent writing process. I’m not a planner, outliner, or someone who starts out with a structure of any kind, so trying to fit pieces of my work into Scrivener Structure just gives me agita. If you are a macroplanning kind of writer who thinks it might work for you, I’d recommend my Hedgebook Residency buddy and self-professed “Scrivener nerd” Janine Kovac’s software workshop.

3. How to start? If you have too many ideas, how can you start shaping them properly?
   You know how flipping a coin helps you figure out what you actually want to do (e.g. that feeling of disappointment when it lands on the other side)? I think you can pull something similar with writing. Sit at your desk, take, say, three ideas. Look at the first one and then say, “Ok, now I need to write five hundred words about this?” How does that feel? Some things I’d look for as a green light aren’t necessarily pure happiness, but curiosity, anticipation, or even maybe a little fear. Does the idea in question have a big life question to sustain your interest beyond the plot or character development its also doing? That’s the thing that will keep you going on the days when writing starts to feel like a slog (and that will happen).

   But also, allow yourself to play! I think “properly” is doing a lot of work in this question. It’s totally normal to have angst about this, but it’s a bit like worrying about next year’s weather. Often we won’t know the proper shape of the project until we’re waist deep in the muck of it, or maybe even several drafts later. And that’s part of it. But maybe that can be freeing, too? Like, there’s no proper form for a brand new idea; any shape is a good shape for words on the page.