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Paper 2 Final

Voice, What is it Good For?

It seems like the word of the semester is voice. What is this thing that we have been talking constantly about for the past two months? In his book Writing Without Teachers Peter Elbow (my favorite scholar that we have read in this class, thus far) explains voice as “the main source of power in your writing (6).” I take this to mean that without voice your writing is virtually pointless. You could be the best grammar scholar ever and know all of the ins and outs of the mechanics of writing, but your writing could end up being pointless. If you do not add a little bit of yourself to the writing (a little bit of voice) it is futile. I understand that voice is definitely the most important part of a paper, but I am still left asking myself the same question – what is voice? I have been struggling with this question as I try to write this. Is voice what I have to say, my opinions, my thoughts, my views, and my ideas? Or is it how I express myself, my word choice, my sentence structure, my style, and writing strategies?

I argued and argued with myself over this question. Finally, I came to the conclusion that voice is the way that you say things, the style. It took me a long time to get to this conclusion because I am a huge advocate of always saying whatever it is that you believe. I kind of always looked at voice as what I had to say. My ideas. But after reading and studying voice thus far this semester (and after a long argument with myself) I have come to the conclusion that the style is the voice. There are only so many things that you can say, but a nearly infinite amount of ways to say something. You can take something that somebody else says or writes and give it your own voice and suddenly it becomes something that you wrote. I am going to take a short passage from the book, On Truth, by Harry G. Frankfurt, imitate it and rewrite it. I am going to put it into my own voice (style) to try and prove my point. This particular passage represents the views that Spinoza has on love.

When somebody finds something in this world that truly makes them happy that is when they find love. They love the thing that makes them happy. According to this definition of love we can not stop loving something as long as it still continues to make us happy. People recognize what makes them happy actually brings them closer to finding and being themselves. Think about this for a minute. You find love when you find something that makes you happy, when you find this it is something that you will cling too. It is something you love. Anything that is loved, that makes somebody more joyful, is obviously something that will be important to them. Things that are important are usually things that will be protected. We protect the things we love.

Taking this passage and putting it into my own voice was fairly simple. However, going back and reading it, I realized that it does not really sound like something I would ever say. Even though I am sure that people who have read a lot of my writing would know that I wrote that excerpt. The words that I used - the repetition and the sentence structure - it is all clearly my style of writing. But under normal circumstances I would never want anyone to read my imitation of that passage. I do not even like reading it.

I usually enjoy reading what I write, or can at least stomach it, but not this imitation. I guess that it must be because I do not believe what I was writing; it is not “me.” While writing that passage I kept going off on different topics. I would take what he said but completely change what he was saying and how he said it. In reality I was just taking his topic and writing what I believed and in my own style and words. I had to keep checking myself to continue to write what Spinoza believed.

As I thought about this experience I thought that maybe I was wrong. Maybe voice is really what you are saying. Your opinions. That would make sense. I find it so much easier to write when I can write whatever I think rather then when I write about something I am told to think and believe. Then I tried the imitation exercise that way. I took the passage and ignoring Spinoza’s opinion on the subject, tried to write my own opinion, in his style. I found this much more difficult then the other exercise. I can not write in the same styles as other people. Unless I can find another author who writes in a very similar style to me, I can not change my style enough to do that exercise.

So the main conclusion that I have come to through these exercises and the writing of this paper is that voice is neither style nor content on their own. It is a combination of both of the styles. I can not write a paper if it is not what I believe. Well, I guess I can (I kind of did it earlier in this essay actually.) It will just end up becoming a piece of crap writing that I never believe to be worth reading, because it does not accurately represent how I feel. During high school I was always told what I had to write; as a teenager (stuck in my rebellious “stick it to the man” phase) I hated it. So I wrote whatever I wanted. What I really thought. Once in awhile I got in trouble for this, but usually I got respect. In fact it was in these experiences that my English teacher told me I had a strong voice and should let it shine.

However, there is no way that style does not play into voice. While I cannot write what other people believe. I also cannot write a paper in another person’s style. I have a style that some people love and some people hate. I write my sentences in weird lengths (either to choppy, or to long.) I write in a very repetitive style. During workshops and group editing, some people tend to dislike my style. I take what they say as advice, but it is nearly impossible for me to write in a forced style. I write in a very repetitive way. I like to force my point into the reader’s minds. Style is something that a writer needs to hold onto.

This thing called voice that we have been talking about for the past two months is something everybody has. Everybody knows their own opinions. Everybody has their own way of writing those opinions. Once you find your voice, go with it. Because, as Elbow says, “It’s your only source of power (7).”