by Reem Albishah ||
My writing annoys me. I catch my reflection on the laptop screen rolling its eyes as my fingers jump across the keyboard. Not that I hate my writing, although I naturally do at times. The problem lies in how obnoxious the words sound when finally translated from thought. The feeling can be best compared to hearing a recording of your voice.
To me, my voice sounds deep and matured. There’s a false sense of base that can be attributed to sound waves travelling through my bones and spreading out in my body. In reality, it actually sounds like a nasally 21 year old whose smokers lung hasn’t caught up with her just yet. The pitch is even higher when I’m speaking with someone I’m attracted to, not to be confused with my squeaky clean customer service tone. I have no control over the sound of my true voice. The idea of it even slips my mind until I have the misfortune of catching it in the background of someone’s Snapchat story. I cannot help the full-bodied cringe that accompanies hearing my shrill voice. Oh God, do I really sound like that? Then and there, I vow never to speak again. But alas, I have too much to say.
As for my voice as a writer? If I’m being honest with myself, I don’t recognize my voice in my writing either.
A writer’s voice is an individualized style of writing that can be defined by the specific usage of diction, syntax, character development, dialogue, punctuation. It’s a consistent voice across several works of writing that a reader listens to whenever they read that author. Unfortunately, consistency is not a strength of mine.
I encountered a filmmaker who said to me that he’s lived “many lives,” referring to the cities he’s lived in. He seemed wistful as he said this, reminiscing on all the ways he’s become the person he is today. On the contrary, I feel as though I’ve lost myself in my many lives. In my short 21 years of life, I’ve moved from state to state and country to country, aimlessly following my father’s restless business ventures. I’ve spent my formative years reshaping myself with every move. I was proud at how I was able to mold into whatever I needed to be in order to adjust. I was a mysterious nomad, the exciting new girl, the social chameleon. When I landed in Houston at 15, the permanence felt foreign. So long were the days of leaving my bags packed and ready for the next move. My family had settled and I had no choice but to follow suit. I can no longer abandon myself and start anew.
Consequently, for someone who is so reliant on change, I never solidified a single aesthetic. I swapped ‘passions’ every few months; human pretzel doing yoga, a wearied-kneed runner, a broken-hearted slam poet, a lone biker, a drunken nightclub dancer, a lazy pothead, and a late-night coffee-shop regular who smoked cigarettes even though they made her nauseous. All my identities bleed into one another, forming a rat king that I now must untangle as I reach adulthood.
And of course, my struggles finding a consistent individual within myself has affected my ability to maintain a consistent style in my writing. I cannot explain my own writing choices, as I am always trying new things for (excuse me) shits and giggles. In my efforts to find that ground to plant myself in, I have created quite a mess. I’m like a young girl experimenting with clothes and makeup with the meager allowance from her parents. I just end up looking like an outlet mall threw up on me. Too many times have I given up in the fitting room and just head home with a sad soft pretzel for my efforts. This blows my confidence as a writer, leaving me feeling like a confused imposter. It can mean the difference between a work in progress and a work abandoned.
Growing up reading prose, I adored authors who were able to seamlessly watermark their work. Shirley Jackson’s writing haunts her readers with suspenseful repetition and cryptic symbolism while she writes about the horror of ordinary domestic life. Her brand is creating terror by having abnormal things happen within the seemingly ordinary, disorienting the reader. Khaled Hosseini uses imagery and sympathetic characters as he writes about the people who must carry the burden of war in a troubled Afghanistan. Novelists are able to use simple literary devices to brand their own writing. As a screenwriter, I am posed with a daunting task to brand my writing with very little space and time to do so.
Screenwriting is the fragile art of storytelling using only characters and their actions. With scriptwriting, I’m not necessarily writing for a reader. I’m writing for a viewer. It’s a challenging attempt to project my voice loud enough to transcend the pages and onto the screen. This can be done through the types of stories I tell and how I decide to tell them. What kinds of characters do I want to create? How do I describe the ways they move? What tone do I want my scenes to project? Diablo Cody, writer of Juno and Jennifer’s Body, writes difficult female characters that embodies her own punkish attitude. Quintin Tarantino splatters his pages with blood and curse words effortlessly mixed with heavy emotional twinges. The Coenn Brothers scripts explore a detached hilarity and zany spirit that remains true to almost all their works. Ryan Murphy’s series such as American Horror Story, Scream Queens and Nip/Tuck share similar quirky characters that give all his drama’s a subtle pinch of camp. I admire these writers for knowing exactly how they want to be heard.
My choices still seem indiscriminate and clumsy. I can attribute it to youth, lack of practice and direction. Despite my underdeveloped voice and multiple versions of myself, I have had glimpses of what I sound like. I know the stories I like to write. I write fast-paced stories that throw my characters through daunting and oftentimes violent situations, where humor can be found in the interactions between a large cast of multidimensional characters. My stories tend to center around the themes of family relationships, womanhood and facing personal growth. I know what I like to write. Now I must figure out how to write it in my own words, with my own voice.
I know the writer I want to be. I have never truly seen her other than through a series of reflections, yet I know she exists in multiple dimensions. Just like my identity, my writing exists in drafts. They both will be edited and refined and nurtured and done better. I am really on a quest without a map. But here’s my starting point: a writer that lacks personal style and desperately wants one who wants to be a writer that can read her work and recognize herself in the pages; writer a voice strong enough to be heard on the screen; not to be entirely dismissed with a voice loud enough to be heard in the back of someone’s Snapchat story.
