Over the last several months, I’ve taken a creative break from my novel project and am working on a new essay collection. In this transition, I’ve encountered an interesting problem. Because I’m what you might call a “method writer,” one who tries to become her characters, I noticed that, even when writing a personal essay, I often slip into the unconscious patterns of my novel’s narrator. I’ve been using her buzzwords, her sentence structures, and her metaphors for so many years, some part of me seems to think they’re mine, too. Most egregious, I’ve even fallen prey to her logical fallacies, the ones I worked so hard to help her overcome by the end!

So, I’ve been actively trying to recultivate my authentic voice. I think sometimes we forget that our voice, in writing and in life, is dynamic; if it doesn’t change over time, it becomes stale and boring to us and likely to our readers. When I first started writing my novel, I was living in the West, teaching angsty teenagers, and interacting with all kinds of people without masks: How could I possibly have the same voice that I have now, working on these essays? In the course of drafting, revising, and polishing that manuscript, I also conceived, bore, and breastfed a human being. So, in order to find my new voice, I needed to spend time unlearning who I was and embracing who I’d become.

The particular essay I’ve been working on intensely over the last few weeks is a doozy. I’m attempting, in 6000 words or less, to fully explore my relationship to reproduction — including several pregnancy losses — and the societal underpinnings of shame attached to some of my experiences. Finding the right register, rhythm, and diction (read: voice) is paramount because I hope this essay will speak to and for those who have experienced this, too. After writing a few paragraphs last week — with a register that felt too submissive and diction that felt too easy — I commented the following, in bold, in the margin: “Remember that you were not comfortable at any point during these experiences. It’s okay for your reader to feel a little uncomfortable, right?” The next few hours were a wonderful experimentation in what that voice might be: a direct, precise woman who isn’t afraid to make her audience a little uncomfortable. Sounds good to me!

To write truly voice-driven work, we must continually define and redefine how we want to communicate; we must adjust to the ways we change over time and to the differing purposes of our work. Often, we have to step outside of the unconscious patterns we’ve built onto every page we’ve already written and say, “Hey! Is that still how you want to sound?” If not, I hope you’ll have the courage to discover what you might write to yourself in the margins.

ABOUT MEG: Megan Rich has written two books, a YA novel and a travel memoir, and is seeking representation for her third, a literary thriller inspired by The Great Gatsby. She took part in the highly-selective Sub-Concentration in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, for which she completed a thesis of original poetry. In addition, she’s a graduate of the Lighthouse Writers Workshop Book Project program. With fourteen years experience as a creative writing teacher and mentor of students from ages twelve to eighty-five, she is passionate about helping others find and refine their voices on the page.

FIND YOUR VOICE WITH MEG: Learn to create a lasting connection with your readers, by developing your voice in Meg’s upcoming class Creating an Authentic Voice, February 1 and 8 from 6-8 p.m. via Zoom. In this two-session class, we will study voice at a deep level to learn the best techniques and generative exercises for connecting directly and quickly with our readers. In the second session, Meg will provide thoughtful feedback and advice on your work, helping you refine and deepen your voice in revisions. More information here.

Kathryn Schwille

Beside my reading chair is a table that’s been in my family for generations. It’s at least 130 years old, with fluted legs and three small finials gracing each side. The table was once painted off-white, and because my grandfather smoked a pipe, a large burn mark scarred the top. Many years ago, I’d tried to remove the paint and sand the top but failed miserably. Bits of white clung to the fluted edges and the ashtray blotch never budged. It was a mess.

Finally, I took the table to be refinished by a professional. I’d always thought it was oak, but when I picked it up the refinisher corrected me: definitely not oak, probably American chestnut. Ouch. That tree has been extinct for decades. In the eyes of Antiques Roadshow, I’d probably defaced (and devalued) a treasure.

The table is pretty, though, in its revision. It usually holds a stack of my husband’s cooking magazines and recently, my copy of Alice Munro’s collection, The Progress of Love. In the twenty years I’ve owned that book, I’ve read several of the stories many times. One is “The Moon Over the Orange Street Skating Rink,” which opens with a scene between two older characters who haven’t seen each other since they were children, and who suddenly meet. I’m struggling to write a scene similar to that, and I’ve turned to Munro for help. What does Munro do that I might borrow? What do her characters say – and not say? How does she avoid predictable dialogue? (That would be the kind I wrote in my first draft: “Hi Amelia, it’s me, Hank. Been a long time.” Yawn.)

Munro’s character Sam, who’s done well in life, is revisiting his hometown, where his old friend runs a neighborhood store. He finds her behind the counter, reading a romance novel.

Sam asked for cigarettes, to test her. She gave him his change and settled her sweater around her shoulders and picked up her book, all without looking at him. Her sweater was covered with little jiggly balls of pink and white wool, like popcorn. She waited till the last minute to speak to him.

“You taken up smoking in your old age, Sam?”

“I thought you didn’t know me.”

“I’d know your hide in a tannery,” said Callie, pleased with herself. “I knew you the minute you walked in that door.”

Sam is playing a game, and Callie has one, too. The testing and withholding give me an idea. A moment of recognition – or lack of it, or refusal to acknowledge it – is full of opportunity. Sam sizes up Callie from that unsophisticated sweater. He and his better circumstances seem to have given him the power in the scene, until she reveals her game. This tiny scene has tension. There’s plenty to inspire me, and off I go. My story is meant to be refinished over and over – no defacing an antique here. With my writer eyes open to Munro’s technique, each of my drafts will come closer to a piece I can live with.

ABOUT KATHRYN: Kathyrn Schwille is the author of the novel What Luck, This Life, set in East Texas around the time of the Columbia shuttle disaster. Her short stories, which have appeared in New Letters, Memorious, Crazyhorse, West Branch and other magazines, have twice won honorable mention in the Pushcart Prize. In 2013, she was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council.

DEVELOP YOUR EYE WITH KATHRYN: Explore fiction by learning to read like a writer — alert to the craft on the page. We’ll read two contemporary short stories in advance: “The Wind” by Lauren Groff, and “Pedicure” by Elizabeth Strout. In class we’ll look closely at what these master storytellers do and why, with particular attention to their artistic decisions about language, structure, dialogue and getting characters on the page. More information here.

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