Writing like no-one is reading

We can spend years developing it, but is there such a thing as our authentic writer’s voice? Or are we searching for something that will inevitably shift with time?

I’ve noticed that I write differently when I’m able to set aside thoughts of who might read my words. Is this then my true writer’s voice? The one that doesn’t feel the need to explain or to censor. To edit out the most uncomfortable parts.

I’ve also realised that when I write with a reader in mind, I probe more. I examine and re-examine. Stretch through the discomfort to eke out something else. Is this really true? I often ask myself. I’m doing it right now. Next comes a round - or two, or three - of editing. Polishing the words, playing with syntax. Failing to spot the inevitable grammatical errors that will jump off the page as soon as I hit send.

When I’m writing for publication – say here on Substack – I can feel an alternative persona creep in. There’s a pressure to entertain, to be witty and smart. To be 19 year-old me trying to get it right in arts journalism class. It’s similar to how I still often feel when meeting someone for the first time. There’s nothing quite like the out-of-comfort-zone setting of a social event to bring out the try-too-hard in me. After all, it’s only human to want to be remembered as funny / informed / kind / insert your own weakness here. I can’t help but think that, had Truman Capote been a bit more self-aware about how he showed up in both life and on the page, he may have been less eager to dish the dirt on his swans.

So here I am, trying to be my authentic, non hilarious, self. I find that once I settle into the conversation, or in this case, the writing, this tendency to perform drops away. It’s usually a third of the way or so into the piece. It’s about then that I often realise why I am writing about this thing. And what it is that I’m attempting to reveal. Some new insight emerges. Shit starts to get real.

Why are we writing? What are we hoping to do with these words? Do we want to connect, entertain, inform? Are we hoping that our reader will feel inspired, thoughtful, ready to take action? Is it a way to make sense of our own way of being in this world, and how that relates to others? Is it all of this and more?

Also, can I write any more questions in a row? Apparently, I can. (See, it’s back!)

Perhaps we’ve been commissioned to write for a publication or brand. In which case, we’ll be expected to adopt their house style and tone of voice. Or maybe we’re hopping between platforms of our own - switching up between our short form Insta identity and our more nuanced Substack self.

Can it even be possible then that we have one true writer’s voice? Or are there many voices within us, just as there are many parts? Either way, it’s not surprising that it can be hard to strip it all back, to find our authentic voice hopefully still waiting to be reclaimed. Somewhere under the piles of mental laundry and lists of limescale to remove, creatine supplements to order and outgrown wellies in need of sizing up.

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

The other night, I began reading Jia Tolentino’s excellent essay collection, ‘Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion’. In the introduction, where Jia describes living through the discombobulating time in American politics / culture / life of 2017-18, she speaks to the contradictions of writing to get to the truth of things.

“When I feel confused about something, I write about it until I turn into the person who shows up on paper: a person who is plausibly trustworthy, intuitive, and clear.”  

And also:

“I wrote this book because I was confused after the election, because confusion sits at odds to my temperament, because writing is my only strategy for making this conflict go away. I’m convinced by this story, even as I see its photonegative: I wrote this book because I am always confused, because I can never be sure of anything, and because I am drawn to any mechanism that directs me away from the truth.”

I often write to try and get to the core of how I feel about things. This is the writing that I find hardest to share. In a world that loves certainty, it takes courage to say - I’m not sure. To tell your reader that you don’t have the answers, but if they come on this journey with you, perhaps you can begin to figure some stuff out together.

Some of my most powerful reader moments have been seeing my experiences reflected back in someone else’s words. That oh-so-human relief of realising that it’s not just you who has thought, done or felt this. This happened during lockdown, when Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s Thin Places left an indelible cast.

“I understand now that there are things that burrow inside of us and take years to unearth, to free ourselves from. That, in time, trust and hope might take the place of other things: things that we never, ever deserved to have to carry.”

Kerri ní Dochartaigh

Equally enduring are the pieces that have left me thinking. I may agree, or not, with the writer’s stance, but they send my brain in new directions. My mind gathering up this alternative view and bringing it along for the next ride. A different perspective to consider in the future, nestled in among my own thoughts and lived experience.

Photo by Elisa Calvet B. on Unsplash

By regularly practising, we can start to get more comfortable with the discomfort that comes with sharing our words, thoughts and ideas. But while it gets easier, that’s not to say that it is easy. As anyone writing a memoir and desperately hoping their parents will never read it, can surely testify.

There’s also the fear of being misunderstood. A fear that can look like the adding of parenthesis. Particularly by those of us who communicate in divergent ways and regularly experience the confusion of some mysterious subtext being interpreted from something we have meant quite literally in everyday conversation.

And, of course, we can’t ignore the very real consequences that come when words are shared in the public domain. Particularly when online spaces have the ability to turn our everyday wondering into a permanent record. Or when the number of clicks and comments are prized above all else, and controversy reins.  I was recently reminded of this, when reading an opinion piece written by a 23 year-old in the New York Times. Not only was it clearly commissioned to provoke, it was riddled with errors. Gratitude that the internet wasn’t what it now is, when younger me was writing for newspapers was my main takeaway. In pursuit of a bigger byline and semi-decent paycheque, I’d likely have been persuaded to write clickbaity pieces too. It makes me wonder - is hell really other people or is it ourselves, viewed through an older, wiser lens?

Cheryl Strayed is currently transcribing her journals from 1988 (when she was 19) to 2010. She writes about how she's being forced to sit with every line she has ever written. No matter how much it now makes her squirm.

“I decided to begin this transcription project several months ago when I sought out one of my journals to do a fact check for an essay I was writing, but after I found what I’d sought, I didn’t put the journal down. Instead, I sat on the floor of my office and read the whole thing, feeling a swirl of shame, pride, regret, sorrow, bewilderment, amusement, longing, wonder, fear, mortification, and gratitude as I turned the pages.”

I’ve admired Cheryl’s courage since first reading Wild, but this is surely her bravest act yet.

“The experience is like having your soul rinsed with very cold water.” 

Cheryl Strayed

I stopped journaling in my late teens, because I was worried about someone finding these words. It wasn’t safe to leave a written record of my thoughts or feelings. And typing in an internet café or university computer room didn’t feel private enough either. Especially when the floppy disk (remember those?), I’d have saved those words-on-Word-docs onto would have been just as vulnerable to sneak reading.

I realise I sound paranoid and more than a little self-aggrandising. After all, who would really be interested in the often dull scribblings of a drama student? Years later, when we finally broke up for good, I discovered that my ex had found a way to access my emails. I learned this because he threatened to use the contents of them to show people the real me. In hindsight, the worst that anyone would have discovered is that I had a major crush on someone who wasn’t him. And yet, I still burned with shame.

Despite these deliberate acts to keep my inner world protected, I did recently find an otherwise empty notebook with two entries from 1999, plus a poem written the following year, inserted on a sheet of A4 paper. Reading them, and sitting with the way I had prioritised that same person’s feelings, in the wake of an event that shattered my sense of self, made me deeply uncomfortable. My instinct was to tear out the pages and burn them. But instead I sat with the words, gradually softening towards my 19 year-old self. She was doing her best to understand and support someone she loved - despite the many, now all too obvious, red flags - while completely unable to turn that same compassion towards herself. It seems I have always written to try to get to the truth of things. To see through the fog.

As for the poem, it was my way of trying to process walking into the scene of an accident, on my way home from work late one night. As couples queued for fish and chips after Friday drinks, and folks stumbled arm-in-arm into CC Blooms, a man lay on the road. So small. And so very still. It must have just happened, there were no police or sirens yet. I stood in disbelief, as groups weaved their way around him and the car with the smashed windscreen, laughing and jostling each other as they continued into the night.

“How can people go dancing. When you lie on the road, bleeding” I wrote that night, in the tiniest of scrawls. Punctuation lost to the unmooring grief that comes with witnessing something terrible happening to someone you don’t know.

Time has hazed the memories of what happened next. I think an ambulance arrived. I imagine my feet then started moving again, one in front of the other. Hood up and keys clutched in my hand, as usual, for the jarringly quiet last stretch of the walk home.

Photo by Zetton Zhang on Unsplash

Jia Tolentino concludes the introduction to Trick Mirror with:

“I began to realize that all my life I’ve been leaving myself breadcrumbs. It didn’t matter that I didn’t always know what I was walking toward. It was worthwhile, I told myself, just trying to see clearly, even if it took me years to understand what I was trying to see.”

If you believe, and I do, that we are always writing ourselves home, then perhaps the clue that we are writing in our truest voice comes through the discomfort. With the knowing that these words don’t quite make sense yet, but sharing them anyway.

Our voice will inevitably shift and evolve over time, as we do. The older I get, the more I reflect, the deeper I begin to connect. And there are things that once seen, can’t be unseen. I’m now reaching a point where I’d rather look back and think, I was/am imperfect. I was/am human. And also sometimes, I was wrong. Better that than to look back with regret at the things I didn’t say.