In Search of My Voice
by Nash Colundalur
The quest for a writer’s distinctive and elusive voice can itself become a thrilling novel. For some of us, writing is an impulse that makes its presence known to us early on in our lives. It claims that it is the best in the available gamut of other expressions –painting, architecture, sculpture etc. Writing also claims to have chosen us, because seemingly it is tailor-made to suit our personalities, allowing us to demonstrate our unique tendencies and philosophies. Then, if this relationship is indeed interdependent and incomparable, why is the idea of ‘voice’, which is supposedly integral to it, not only vague but also so difficult to locate? Where is it, and what is it?
In my search for my voice, I have been everywhere and continue wading through overgrown volumes of work. Reading writers, I have come to obsessively admire and also cast off. Reading everything of Martin Amis and the ingenious Nicola Barker, subconsciously and perhaps foolishly emulating their writing. Then, in a few years’ time, horrified by the idolatry and turning to the sublime Marilynne Robinson and Tessa Hadley and still frustratingly, continuing to write like them. When heroes become literary rogues and the dismissed are elevated, the hope is that my own writing undergoes a transformation and the elusive thing called voice is found. This shakeup is, I’m assuming, caused by ‘life’. Life interrupts, tragedies happen, new joys surface, beliefs are broken and rebuilt, and in an ever-changing world, ideology suffers a heavy defeat. So, after languishing at the futility of looking for my unique voice, I go back to the drawing board to take myself back to a place where I, if only subconsciously, relate less to old heroes and more to the new ones. It all sounds too simplistic. It all seems like an exercise bound for failure. But there is discovery in failure. There may be an inherent truth languishing within it.
This is where I discover this thing called voice. It comes from nowhere. But before I claim it as my own and for perpetuity, it comes with warnings.
An interesting thing happened this summer while I was on holiday with my partner and my dog. I don’t take easily to beach holidays and generally have a miserable time. I’m constantly worrying about not being productive and make life unbearable for everyone around me. But this time, my partner wisely left me to sulk in the basement of the holiday home and went off to the beach with the dog. She had a great time, but I broke my promise of having a terrible time. I had just finished Francisco Goldman’s Pulitzer-nominated, Monkeyboy and Magda Szabo’s celebrated The Door. I was in awe of the power and simplicity of both books. Both are semi-autobiographical and very different in their approaches but magnificent in their search for authenticity. When I sat down to write and edit my novel, though I resisted it, I expected to be subconsciously affected by these works and my standard influences. But it went a completely unexpected way, almost the opposite.
The writing flowed and felt authentic and, importantly, like my voice – an expression influenced by my life experience and its interpretation as seen only by me. I was thrilled, wrote copious amounts all day, and went to the beach in the evening. It was a great holiday. I had no idea how this had happened and didn’t want to analyse the situation. I was afraid of jinxing it. When I returned home and reread the writing I had done over the holiday period, it didn’t seem as glorious as I thought it was; in fact, it was dull. But within it was a voice that would carry me through, at least for the season. I concluded that if voice is one’s own truth, then it’s an everchanging one. It changes as we change and grow, but with a persistent, inborn, and delicate uniqueness.
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