Musing About Voice

Today I'm struggling with my muse.  Have you ever had one of those days when you can't seem to find your writerly voice?  For whatever reason, whether it be stress or tiredness or simple distraction, I think all writer's struggle to hit their writing stride from time to time.

That's one of the reasons why I didn't post a philosophy post over the weekend. My mind was just dead.  For that reason, I'm going to combine my weekend philosophy post with my Monday meeting with my muse.  I'll reflect a little on the issue of voice.

Sometimes I read the works of authors I enjoy and admire, and I wonder how they put their stories on paper.  From time to time, I wish I could replicate their voice, or even just capture the confidence that comes through in their voice.

Still, while it may be wise to study the voice of our favorite authors so we can better understand how they use language to tell their stories, we shouldn't wish to replicate any one writer's voice exactly.

"A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here."
-Quentin Tarantino 

Part of telling that truth is being genuine in your voice.  The way you structure your sentences, the words you choose, are a reflection of who you are.  The parts of the story you emphasize, and the parts you gloss over, reveals a lot about you.  Putting yourself onto the page in that way keeps you excited and connected to your work.

"A voice is such a deep, personal reflection of character."

-Daniel Day-Lewis 

If you try to use a voice that is not your own, you will ultimately lose that connection with your work that each writer should have, and your work will suffer for it.  That's why I know that, even when I'm having a brief period of time when I struggle to find my voice, I can't give up.  As a writer, I have to be me.  Otherwise I might as well not do it at all.

So how do you make it past such difficulties when life weighs on you and makes expression difficult?  Keep trying, and believe that with a little effort, you'll hit your stride again.  It's only a matter of time and effort.

The Weekend Philosopher: Wisdom

This will be a short post, since I've had another quite busy weekend.  Six years ago today, I married the man I love.  It's amazing how fast those years have gone, and I'm sure that will continue to be the case.

Today, I just wanted to take a quick look at a tricky concept.  What is wisdom?

In my view, wisdom doesn't mean knowing the answers to everything.  It doesn't mean having a beard and sitting alone in the woods, though one who does so may in fact be wise.  For me, wisdom is knowing how to look at the world and figure it out.  It's much more an approach to life than anything else.

Image courtesy of Photokanolk
/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If you have a thirst for knowledge and wish to seek it out at every turn, you are well on your way to wisdom.  How can you hope to develop a well-balanced and calm approach to life if you don't have curiosity?  How can you seek out knowledge if you don't understand how to sort through the good and the bad 

Yet, you cannot hope to be wise without an intimate knowledge of yourself.  The way you approach the world must be unique to you.  The way you seek knowledge must be uniquely you.  How else can you hope to keep the enthusiasm and hunger that pushes you to learn more about the world around you.  After all, you cannot hope to go for a long walk in shoes that don't fit.  You would only end up frustrated and pained by the blisters worn on your feet.

Image courtesy of pat138241
 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How do you get to know yourself?  Through honesty and self-reflection.  You may not always like all that you learn about yourself, but that honesty is the key to change.  It is the key to learning and discovery.

I guess if wisdom does begin in wonder, we should feel that kind of wonder about our own selves.  This comment does not come from vanity, but the simple truth that you are the only one who can travel your own path to wisdom.  If you want to make your journey to wisdom successfully, you need to know how you walk through life.  And in the process of self-discovery, you hone the skills required to discover more about the world around you and how you fit into it.

These are simply some of my scattered thoughts about the subject.  What do you think wisdom is?  How do you attain it?  Is it even something that can be attained, and if so, should we hope to attain it?

The Weekend Philosopher: Judgment

The world is filled with judgments, many of them negative.  Whether we mean to or not, we make assumptions based on the way people dress, the color of their skin, their religion, where they come from, their job or lack thereof, how much money someone has, who someone falls in love with, and a variety of other factors.

Even when someone makes an actual mistake, I find it does well to remember this.

Background Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono
 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

None of us are perfect, and it's far too easy to dismiss someone without taking our own imperfections into consideration.  We are all human, we are all fallible.  That doesn't mean we don't have amazing things to offer.

Since we know judgment of others comes all too easily, we know also that people will judge us.  This can prompt us to look inward and think too critically of what we see.  Don't live according to what you fear other people will think about you.  If you go that route, you will only wind up making yourself unhappy.  No matter who you are or who you pretend to be, someone will judge you badly for it.  So if the negativity will come either way, why make yourself miserable by denying who you are?  Why judge yourself unworthy of being shared with the world?

Found on Sun Gazing Facebook page.

Don't dwell on those who think badly of you, and surround yourself with people who love and encourage you.  Life is too short to be wasted on the negativity, whether you aim it at yourself or people you don't know.  I've aimed a lot of negativity at myself over the years, and I can say from firsthand experience that it's a waste of time and energy.  I'd rather devote that time and energy to something more productive.

The Weekend Philosopher: Cosmic Place and Perspective

I'm a big fan of the cosmic perspective.  It's amazing how your perspective shifts when you go from looking at how you fit into your family, then into your community, then into your country, then into your world, and finally, into the cosmos as a whole.  Many people report a feeling of insignificance when they stop to think of how enormous the universe is.

Yet many of those who've lived in the cosmic experience don't succumb to terrible feelings of insignificance.  Take this quote from Carl Sagan.

Image By NASA, ESA, K. France (University of Colordo, Boulder), and P. Challis and R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I love these words because they remind me of one of my most important philosophies of life. Though I may disagree with others, I try to appreciate the differences that make us unique.  There is no reason we cannot get along.  We simply need to remain humble and recognize that the way we live our own life is not the only way.  It is not necessarily the right way.  It is simply the right way for us, as we are at this point in time and space.  As long as we try to treat others with respect and look at them as the unique, precious beings that they are (even if we may not enjoy spending time with them on a personal level), we can make our own home in the cosmos a better place.  We all have something special to contribute to the world.

Remember, we all come from the same building blocks of life.  We are all part of this grand thing we know as the universe.

I think this video encapsulates how I feel when I look at the night sky, and it does so in a far more eloquent way than I feel capable of at this moment.  So watch and enjoy!

When you look at the cosmos, do you feel small, or do you feel large and connected with all you see?  What's your unique perspective?

The Weekend Philosopher: Purpose in Life

Given that I'm in the midst of doing the A-Z Challenge with two blogs, I'm only doing short posts for the Weekend Philosopher this month.  I figured I would post quotes that in some way reflect my personal philosophy of life and say a few words about it.  We all have a personal philosophy, after all.

Here's a quote that speaks to me.

Background Image courtesy of Jennifer Ellison
 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Personally, I feel we choose our own path in life.  Our passions draw us in a particular direction, and the way we feed those passions determine how far we go.  What mission have you set for yourself?  What overarching goal do you pursue?  Our answers are as unique as we are.

So, what happens when you accomplish that goal?  Do you settle down and say you've done all there is to do?  Of course not.  We may retire from a career.  A particular path may come to an end.  That's when we must forge ahead and carve out a new path.

You may retire from your job, but you do not retire from life.  Not as long as you're alive.

What is your personal philosophy?

The Weekend Philosopher: Identities Formed

Identities are tricky things.  Set yourself the task of telling someone who you are.  I dare you.  It isn't so easy.

In this scene from Babylon 5, a mysterious man named Sebastian asks Delenn who she is.  She gives her name, her title, a job description.  None of these answers are deemed acceptable.  While these answers may be useful for someone who needs to know about you, they don't truly touch on who we are.

In answering the question of who we are, it helps to consider all the factors that make us who we are.  When someone asks us the question "Who are you?" they usually want to know your name, or maybe the names of relatives or friends so they have some idea of how you fit in to the social fabric of the world.  They may say a lot about your background that helped to influence your development as a person, but no one can claim to know you through this information alone.  These things are not you.  After all, when someone steals your identity and uses it to spend your hard earned money, they haven't actually stolen who you are, though they may have influenced who you will become by impacting the way you trust people and interact with them.

I am of the opinion that part of who we are is a function of biology and the way our brains develop before we're even born.  This belief is enforced by having my own children.  I can say that my two boys started out with distinct personalities. Jude was the loud, high-maintenance child, and Lyle was the laid-back child. These character traits were visible from birth and inform the way they each react to given situations.  Some aspects of our person are an integral part of us and cannot be changed.

Even so, we learn from the environment in which we are raised.  Nurture plays as significant a role as nature.  That's why I get frustrated by the nature vs. nurture argument.  I think they work together and it would be silly to disregard one entirely in favor of the other.  

Our parents work to instill a given set of values in us.  Even parents who are abusive and neglectful instill values in their kids, though those values may ultimately be more harmful than anything else.  From a young age, we learn to trust authority (or not to), we learn how to interact with others, we learn not to steal or lie.  It's no accident that most people end up with the same religious beliefs and honoring the same traditions as their parents.  Our culture directs our growth and development in very real ways.  

This is why societal attitudes as a whole toward things like race and sexual orientation change rather slowly.  There is a distinctly generational way in which these perceptions change, because those who are raised with one set of values find it difficult to shake them, or may find it undesirable to do so.  To alter the way you look at the world is to, in some way, alter who you are in relation to the world.  This can be a distinctly uncomfortable proposition to face.


John Dewey said, "The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of action."

Not only are we formed by the people around us, we are also formed by the choices we make.  When something goes wrong, we can choose to give up, or we can choose to look on the bright side.  We choose which career path to follow. Maybe we pursue a childhood passion that was ignited by an inspiring teacher. Maybe we follow in our parents' footsteps.  Or maybe we choose a path other than what our families want for us as a kind of rebellion.  Or maybe we choose a safe path, leaving behind the things we truly want to do.  We make these choices due to a multitude of factors we may not recognize.  Our choices have power, but they are not made in a vacuum.

To show you what I mean, say a child is raised in a family of criminals.  They have an unstable home life growing up and their parents are in and out of jail.  It might seem easy for them to assume the values of their parents and follow the same path.  But maybe they want something different.  Maybe they make the choice to have something different.  They may follow a different path, but their choice is influenced by the pain of their childhood.  Or maybe their personal disposition, which they've had their whole lives, makes them yearn for something different.

I like to say that we're in constant dialogue with our environment.  It speaks to us, and we respond with our actions.  We change our world, and we change it back.  Nothing remains exactly the same.

Sorting out the factors that make us who we are can be quite difficult and confusing.  How have the events and people in your life helped make you who you are today?  Which influence do you think is the most powerful in determining who a person becomes?

Lastly, I wanted to share this powerful video.  It's a little over twelve minutes long, but it's worth the time.  I was bullied as a kid, and though I try not to let that fact get me down, I can still feel the effects of it.  Remember, the way you treat others has the power to affect their reality in ways you may not imagine.  I would encourage people to be a positive factor in a person's life rather than a negative one.

The Weekend Philosopher: Identity Crisis

I wanted to start out my tenure as The Weekend Philosopher by addressing the issue of personal identity.  Descartes penned the famous words "I think, therefore I am."  We know we exist because we are thinking beings.  And our thoughts, our memories, are a large part of who we are.  Even when we stand at a crossroads in life, confused about which path to take, we still feel confident about our identity.  We know our name, we know about our past, we know what our dreams were as children (even when real life forces us to change gears). When someone asks us who we are, we can typically provide them with an answer deemed satisfactory by both parties.

However, life can become complicated.  And in the realm of science fiction, life altering complications are the norm.  I recently re-watched the Star Trek TNG episode "Second Chances" (Season 6, Episode 24).  In this episode, a visit to a science outpost reveals that there are two William T. Rikers.  When Riker served aboard the Potempkin eight years earlier, a transporter accident resulted in the materialization of two Rikers: one aboard the Potempkin, and one on the science station.  After living alone on the science station for eight years, Lieutenant Riker is shocked to learn of the existence of Commander Riker.

Is one of them the real Riker?  After all, we each have an idea of our own unique identity.  Would the presence of a copy threaten that unique identity?  (In thinking about this question, I wrote a poem.)  Let's run with our intuition for a minute in thinking about this question.  Say you were to walk into a scientist's lab and scanned.  Before your eyes, a perfect duplicate materializes, complete with a record of your memories.  You'd intuitively say "I'm the real me.  They're the copy."  Yet, possessing your memories up to the point of being scanned, your duplicate would likely make an impassioned case that they're the real you. Why wouldn't they?  They possess everything you do that makes you who you are.  You are both thinking beings, and you think you possess the same identity. How can that be?

In the case of this episode, Riker didn't even see a duplicate materialized.  His body was disassembled, and the information ended up manufacturing two Rikers.  Both of them came into existence at the same time with the same DNA and the same memories.  In a very real sense, there's no way to point to one of the Rikers and say "This is the real one."  At the moment they both materialized, they both had an equal right to declare the same identity. It is my assertion that for that one moment, the Rikers were very much the same person, though they inhabited different bodies.  After that moment of genesis, however, their lives proceeded down very different paths, producing distinct memories and attitudes.  Each passing day differentiated them from one another a little more. The identities they possessed became more recognizably their own.  When we see the two of them together on the Enterprise eight years later, they are certainly similar in more ways that not, and a casual observer might say they are the same person, though that is no longer the case.

If you think this scenario seems disconcerting, you're not alone.  Lieutenant Riker and Commander Riker clearly rubbed each other the wrong way.  They saw in one another what might have happened, what may have been.  They also likely felt intruded upon.  Lieutenant Riker expresses interest in rekindling his romance with Deanna Troi, which Commander Riker had left behind in the pursuit of his career.  So long as the two of them remained on the same ship, it seemed inevitable they would tread on each others toes.  It seems clear there's only enough room in our lives for one of us.

In the end, Lieutenant Riker leaves the ship to restart his career.  There was little doubt this would happen.  He has to make a new life for himself, and he could never do that on the Enterprise.  Commander Riker is our Riker.  He's the one who serves as Picard's right hand man.  He's the one we've watched play poker and trombone.  While it was fun to see the other Riker for a time, one feels more authentic than the other.  We may know intellectually that this is ridiculous, but that doesn't change the gut feeling we have.  Had we begun the series following Lieutenant Riker on the science station, our feelings would be different.

Perhaps this is why, before he goes, Lieutenant Riker decides to go by his middle name: Thomas.  He understandably wants to claim a life for himself, though to be fair, he could have just as easily said Commander Riker should change his name. Except one of them has been alone for eight years, and when he did set foot on a starship again, he clearly stood in the shadow of our Riker.  He changes because he's put in a position where he feels like an imposter, regardless of how strongly he feels about who he is.  One Riker has an entire ship of colleagues who can attest to who he is and can say that he's the Riker they know.  The other doesn't have that.  He needs to seek that out.  Deciding to claim the name Thomas is, in my opinion, an attempt on his part to embrace his own path and make a place for himself.

I know I've covered a lot here, but I'm encouraged by the questions I've raised.

• How is our sense of self enforced by the people around us?
• Why would a duplicate threaten our sense of identity?
• What constitutes identity?
• How do experiences shape our identity?  What about biology?  (Nature vs. Nurture is an old philosophical debate)

In future posts, I hope to examine these questions in more depth.  Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.  I may take them into consideration when writing future posts.

Welcome to the Weekend Philosopher

I love philosophy, because I love thinking about problems that most people skim over to deal with more practical matters.  In addition to my B.A. in writing, I also have a B.A. in philosophy.  While I can't say I'm a philosopher, I can follow what a philosopher says (at least most of the time).  In college, I wrote some fine philosophical papers.  I love to argue a point, and that love of arguing served me well.

Blogspiration is over, and I felt like I should try something that would still allow me to contemplate deep questions about life.  They may not all be uplifting, but I hope to at least inspire  serious thought.

Now, like my badge says, I'm attempting to adopt the title of The Weekend Philosopher.  The rest of the time I'll be a writer, a mother, a wife, and a full time lunatic.  Still, once per weekend (the day itself depending on when I can spare the time to wax philosophical) I'll put on my philosopher's cap and ponder something.  It may be a quote, an issue in the real world, or anything else that gets the wheels in my head spinning in an interesting way.

I'll start next weekend with my philosophical meanderings.  I hope you'll stop by to hear what I have to say!

Fiction As a Way of Life

Why do we read?  Why do we write?  What does it mean to write?  For me, these are critical questions.  I also have an answer to these questions.  It's the answer that works best for me, and I thought I'd share it with you.

We interpret everything we see.  Without our ability to interpret, we wouldn't have the ability to understand anything.  We interpret art, the content of the daily conversations we have with others, and written texts we encounter.  All we see, hear, or know, passes through the senses and is decoded by the brain.  And in that process, all we've learned from before helps us to make sense of new data.

We read because we're creatures of imagination.   As children, our parents read us fairy tales that teach us lessons in life.  It's how we learn about the world, and it's how we begin to engage with the things in life we've never directly experienced.  We continue to grow, and every once in awhile, we read something that resonates with us.  These words wiggle their way into our brains and become a part of who we are.  Our view of the world is steadily built, word by word, scene by scene, feeling by feeling.  These moments of building and connection to a new way of seeing the world are rare and precious.

I find that writing is a similar exercise.  In the end, I write more for myself than I do for anyone else.  I create a world, and I create people to inhabit it with me. We explore it together, and I feel their struggles and triumphs.  I learn alongside them.  By walking in their shoes and seeing their world through their eyes, I learn more about myself.

Image courtesy of adamr /
FreeDigitalPhotos.net

No matter who we are and whether we recognize it or not, fiction is a part of our lives.  And for writers, one can even say that fiction is a way of life.

Everyone has curiosity about the world around them, and when we don't know all the facts about something, we often fill in the blanks and create our own fiction to explain.  Who hasn't seen a fight break out in a public place and wondered how it started?  Regardless of whether or not it's any of our business, we can't completely shake that sense of curiosity.

We engage with fiction for the same reason we occasionally find ourselves watching a pair of people in the middle of the mall arguing.  When we watch real people that we don't know, it's like tuning in to a movie halfway through.  Given the way they dress and the words they use, we can make educated guesses about who they are and what they may be upset about.  But that's all it is: a guess.  In order to be sure, we'd have to delve more deeply into their lives, but as casual observers, we don't have the ability to do that.  Given those limitations, our picture of that moment and of the people in it is only a fiction.  It's the fiction that we can't help but write in our heads.

People engage with fiction, because it renders those tricky parts of life more comprehensible.  While we may not be able to learn everything from books or the things we write, it's a crucial piece of the puzzle of how we learn and grow.

Then, there's also the obvious answer to my questions, and one that I think is also as valid.  We read and write because it's fun.  It gives us an outlet from which to escape our lives and explore something new.  Of course, when I put it that way, it sounds an awful like what I said earlier about exploring the parts of the world that we can't see for ourselves, thus learning from the reading experience. Did I accidentally prove that learning is fun?  If so, I'll have to remember this line of reasoning for the days when my kids are older and don't feel like going to school.

I'll end this post with a quote that I believe exemplifies the importance of living a life laced with creativity.  Feel free to interpret it in whatever way feels right to you.  That is, after all, part of the joy.

Death and Dreams (better than taxes, right?)

Today is one of those days that keeps me thinking.  My mom died last year, and today would have been her 48^th birthday.  Overall I’m doing all right, but I can’t escape the reality that life is short.  For too many people, it’s far shorter than they ever would have dreamed.  These thoughts have made me, at least for today, into a productive person.  Knowing that I can’t guarantee how much time I will have to accomplish all I dream of, which is a truth we all must contend with, I am motivated in a way that I wouldn’t have believed possible a year ago.

So far, I’ve been keeping up with my blogging goals, and I’m keeping pace with the word count goal that I set for myself earlier this week.  Actually, I need another 50 words or so written in my story before midnight to be absolutely in line with my goal, but given that laundry and dishes are done and my kids are in bed, I should have no issues accomplishing that.

The story itself remains untitled, but that’s all right.  Here I thought I would share some of the details of the story itself.  It’s set in a dystopian future where political extremism from both sides got so bad that America splits in two halves that are separated by a buffer zone.  The two halves no longer want anything to do with each other.  Ideology is so strongly embedded that any citizen of either side that is determined to be a deviant is subject to harsh punishments.  Many end up fleeing to live in the buffer zone to escape persecution.

The story starts with a poem that is recited to young children to scare them away from the buffer zone.  After all no country wants to lose too many of its people.  Here’s the poem.

The godless creature, not even a man,

though locked up, concocted a plan.

This dastardly deed, a violent act.

Written in blood, an irrevocable fact.

He tore them down, and after fled,

leaving behind him a trail of dead.

He ran to the edge and then beyond.

Who here can know what he has spawned?

Tales of wickedness continue to grow,

as he hunts those who dare to go.

So stay home where you are safe and warm.

Do not tempt the dark, the legend, the storm.

The wolf, he prowls, forever a fiend.

He tears at his victims ‘til the bones are cleaned.

Anyway, that’s all I’ll put here for now.  So far I think it’s coming along all right, but I still have a long way to go yet.

Questions

The more research I do, the more my goals in life scare me.  The odds of achieving success in this field seem more frightening than inspiring.  Yet I can’t let that scare me off, even knowing how much work lies ahead, because I want this so much I can’t imagine not doing this.

I keep asking myself why anyone would want to read anything I write.  I suppose this is a common self doubt that most authors experience at some point.  The main question I have has to be this:  How do I overcome that self doubt, or how might I use it as motivation to spur me forward rather than allowing it to drag me down?

In college I studied both writing and philosophy.  Both were writing intensive, and both required me to ask a lot of basic questions.  In philosophy, however, I think I adopted the wonderful, though sometimes terrifying habit, of asking so many questions that my brain temporarily overloads.  It can be great for the creative process that is storytelling, provided the seemingly endless list of questions can be managed.

I think a key thing that makes a story interesting to readers is raising provocative questions, or setting up a scenario that lends itself to speculation.  The plot should be unique, or the characters should at least be dynamic.  We need to care about the people in the story, we need to genuinely wonder what will happen to them.  And as I write, I continually ask myself how to get to that point.  If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s asking questions.

I just hope I’m asking the right ones.