A writer’s ‘voice’, Rory Stewart’s memoir, owning a fancy toaster
I did one of the Scribe Lounge writers’ panels at their online screenwriting festival last week, and despite feeling myself a complete fraud (I was in a group with the excellent Glen Laker and Becky Prestwich — two proper writers), I had a lot of fun.
One of the questions that we got asked was about how you find your voice; or how to describe your voice when someone is gauche enough to ask you about it. ‘Voice’ is a difficult subject, not the least, as Glen very sagely pointed out — because it’s a term that we writers don’t really use; at least not about ourselves. It’s a term that comes from the outside, something talked about by producers, or commissioners, or execs. It’s something that is imposed onto us.
I burbled quite a bit in my answer (in all my answers, actually), but I think what I was trying to say was this. If a writer’s voice is anything, then it is a complex: one composed of a number of different vectors.
Part of it is purely mannerism: the natural patterns of speech that we all have. Part of it has to do with where we grow up (Becky said that all of her scripts sound a bit Northern — mine, to my shame and despite me being Lancastrian born and bred, probably don’t sound Northern enough). It has to do with our sense of humour, our internal rhythms, and it is barely conscious or knowable to us — we ourselves are the least aware of our own tics and are the most appalled when they’re pointed out to us.
A second, important point is how we engage with audience or genre expectations. To a degree, this facet of our voice is a careful balancing act between personal artistic expression and resonance with what our audience wants from us. It encapsulates the deliberate choices we make, about received narrative structure, a set of expected or pre-understood themes; and perhaps most of all, our level of daring. As writers, one of the challenges we face is gauging how much we wish to conform to or deviate from these perceived parameters.
Our decisions, conscious or unconscious, the choices we make, whether we abide by traditional literary norms or disrupt them, create an ongoing dance between the novel and the known. Basically, put shortly, our voice is about our relationship with the world as we find it.
What I was left with at the end of the panel, though, was a sense of how alienating the term ‘voice’ can be, and how dangerous it is for a writer to take it into their writing process. When a writer becomes excessively engrossed with the concept of having a ‘voice’, or developing a ‘voice’, there lies a very risk of it becoming a block, inhibiting the natural flow of thought and creativity. It’s like thinking too hard about riding your bike while trying to ride it: I can’t think of anything better designed to make you fall off.
The link to the talk is here. I believe you’ll need to sign up to scribe lounge, which would be a jolly smart thing to do.
Speaking of ‘voice’, to my shame I’ve been reading Rory ‘your favourite Tory’ Stewart’s memoir, Politics on the Edge — which, like Stewart himself — says a lot of things that you agree with, but in such a way that makes you a little embarrassed to do so. There’s no easy way to say this, but the problem is his personality — both as an author and a character in his own tale.
In anecdote after anecdote, Stewart presents himself as a sort of public school prefect, constantly willing to tell the idiots and layabouts around him the precise nature of their idiocy or laziness. For example, in one section of the book, Stewart is repeatedly exhorted by Liz Truss (his boss for a stint when they were both in the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs) to “stop being clever.” It is a joke at Truss’s expense, and a good one: she is definitely someone, whatever her other faults, who assiduously follows her own advice. Nevertheless, Stewart’s meagre success over the years that this biography runs — a stint as a professor in the states, a few frustrated ministerial posts, well a failed run at the Conservative leadership — seem to suggest that it may have been better if he’d done as she’d counselled. Time and time again, Stewart proves too clever for his own good: certainly too clever to effect the change he wants.
The book’s final scene takes us into the leadership debate that ended his prime ministerial ambitions. Stewart can be found desperately squawking out good sense while his fellow leadership hopefuls, the debate moderator, even the person controlling his mic, conspire to silence him. After reading his book, one can’t help but sympathise with them.
Stewart, even in his own voice, seems to be someone for whom knowing what the right thing is, is more important than making it happen.
Of course, none of us is immune to pridefulness. A few years ago, I extravagantly treated myself to a fancy toaster, which works of its own accord — all you need do is put bread in it and it lowers, cooks and returns it to you automatically. It was a pretentious purchase, no doubt, other people have nice things, so why shouldn’t I? And it came in a fine mint green which matched our kettle.
Recently staying in a relative’s flat for a couple of days — I was brought to a sort of anagnorisis. As I blurrily awoke after arriving late the night before, I stumbled into the kitchen and couldn’t get the toaster to work. It wasn’t unfancy itself, with settings and dials on its front that seemed far beyond the requirements of its purpose, but no matter how many buttons I pressed I couldn’t get the thing to toast.
It was only when I felt around the back that I discovered that it had a mechanical arm that you pressed down to make the toaster toast. In the distant past, I mistily remember that this was a commonplace mechanism on such a machine.