An Author’s Voice
Today we’re
going to chat about “voice”. Not just any voice, but an author’s voice. It took
me, literally, years to understand what my own personal author’s voice was, and
this in spite of everyone telling me I write just like I talk. So I’m a slow
learner. Blame it on my mother, who’s dead and won’t mind.
But really, when
my very first book, ONE BRIGHT MORNING, was published in 1995 (it will soon be
available as an audiobook), Meredith Brucker, the fabulous teacher who taught a
“How to Get Published” class at San Marino High School in 1993, asked me to
read from my book at the South Pasadena Public Library. Oh, and as an aside,
you’ll notice the name of the class was “How to Get Published”, not “How to
Write”. I honestly don’t think you can teach people how to write books. You can
give them all the tools, and if they have two brain cells to rub together,
they’ll learn to use them well, but you can’t teach them to make 400 or 500
manuscript pages interesting enough for an editor to read.
Anyhow, to get
back to the South Pasadena Public Library. I read the first line from my novel,
of which I was very, very proud (not because it was so great, but because
Meredith’s advice had worked, and I’d got the blasted thing published), and the
audience laughed. I looked up, startled. That line wasn’t supposed to be funny.
After all, I, a migraine-headache sufferer for decades, had decided to plop a
young widowed woman with a little baby alone in a cabin in the Lincoln National
Forest in New Mexico (well, it was the New Mexico Territory at the time, and
there wasn’t a Lincoln National Forest, but never mind that), give her a I-can’t-even-stand-up-much-less-open-my-eyes-and-do-anything
migraine, and then gift her with a gunshot stranger to tend. There is
absolutely nothing funny about that scenario, especially when you add in the
gunshot stranger's two Mescalero Apache friends, who scared poor Maggie Bright
to death when they suddenly popped up in her kitchen. But everyone laughed. I,
on the other hand, was not amused.
And then someone
told me she’d read the book and asked me why I’d included in the book a couple
of fellows named Ferrett and Pelch as hirelings for the villainous Prometheus
Mulrooney. I said I’d added them for comic relief. She said the book didn’t
need comic relief because it was funny already. Huh? That book had taken my heart and my soul, dammit! It was emotional. It was romantic. It was gripping.
It wasn’t funny. To prove it, here’s the lovely cover Melissa Alvarez just made
up for the audio edition of ONE BRIGHT MORNING:
Evidently people
disagreed with me. Well, nuts to them. At any rate, I let my writerly juices
flow some more, and my second opus, TEXAS LONESOME, was published in January of
the next year. Okay, that book was funny. But that’s only because it contained
dachshunds, and there’s just something laughable about an animal that’s two
dogs long and half a dog high, you know?
Then I submitted
a book to Berkley’s “Homespun” line, the requirements for which were that the
books be set in the Old West, radiate family values, and contain at least one
child. So I sent ‘em a manuscript in which a woman steals a baby, runs to her
alcoholic foster-brother in (ta-da!) New Mexico Territory, after also stealing
a whole bunch of money. They bought it, and called it SWEET CHARITY. Which
might possibly make one wonder about Berkley’s notion of family values, but
that’s not the point. The point is someone said she read the book and laughed
her way through it. Wait a Minute!
Darn it all, that book wasn’t funny! It was emotionally gripping and full of
angst and anguish. Wasn’t it? Well . . . I dunno. Maybe it wasn’t.
Anyhow, along
about the fifth or sixth year of what I cynically call my writing career (I
wouldn’t be cynical if I could make a living at it), I gave up and realized
that, yeah, I do write like I talk. And ever since I was a kid, people have
laughed at the things I said. Not at me, mind you, but at the things I said.
And there, I do believe, we have the crux of the issue. I grew up among
difficult people. It’s the truth. Therefore, in order to deflect attention from
my own flaws, I made ‘em laugh so they couldn’t get at me. The rest of the time
I tried to remain locked in my room as much as possible.
I wonder if
other authors know how their own personal “voices” evolved. Wouldn’t surprise
me, and it also wouldn’t surprise me if other people who write “funny” are
outraged and depressed a whole lot of the time, as I am. But enough of that. And just for the heck of it, here's the audiobook cover for LOST AMONG THE ANGELS, Book #1 from my Mercy Allcutt series, also created by Melissa Alvarez. I love this cover!
Please feel free
to enter my monthly contest by sending your name and address to me at alice@aliceduncan.net . At the end of
May I’ll be giving away copies of, what the heck, TEXAS LONESOME. I’d give away
copies of ONE BRIGHT MORNING, too, but I can’t find any. Also, please feel free
to visit my web site, where you can read the first chapter of darned near every
one of my fifty or so books (www.aliceduncan.net ), and feel
free to hang out on my Facebook page, too, if you feel like it: https://www.facebook.com/alice.duncan.925?ref=tn_tnmn
Thanks!
