A Quote by Lori Lansens
Aunt Lovey used to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed a writer's voice. 'Read,' she'd say, 'and if you have a writer's voice, one day it will shout out, 'I can do that too!
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I knew very early on I wanted to be a television writer. My teachers told me I was a strong writer and had a voice. I really leaned in to that.
It's not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, 'Read,' but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, 'Don't read, don't think, just write,' and the result could be a mountain of drivel.
I just have to be able to follow and enjoy the writer's voice and the writer's point of view. Liking what the person has to say is not really important to me.
In a sense my whole life as a writer is trying to find structural ways, or formal ways, to permit that outflowing so it doesn't just look like crazy output. In other words, if it turns out that you can do a given voice, that's just kind of inclination. But then if you can find a way to put that voice in a story so that the voice serves a purpose, then I would say that's being a writer.
Any writer takes inspiration from what they read and watch, and over their career works on forming their own voice. I think it was probably Stephen King who made me want to become a writer.
Like Hemingway and Faulkner, but in an entirely different mode, Fitzgerald had that singular quality without which a writer is not really a writer at all, and that is a voice, a distinct and identifiable voice. This is really not the same thing as a style; a style can be emulated, a voice cannot, and the witty, rueful, elegaic voice gives his work its bright authenticity.
There are certain writers I can't read when I'm trying to write because their voices are so distinct. Cormac McCarthy, he's the most different writer from anything I've ever written, but there's something about those really spare sentences that is just tough - it would be too much of an influence. Grace Paley is my favorite writer. Her stuff is so voice-driven, when I read her a lot I want to make my writing more voice-y and dialogue-heavy. I love a lot of stuff in translation.
No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.
No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, dont confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader.
I never wanted to be a celebrity writer. I wanted to be a good writer. I'm still trying to be a good writer. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning.
It's not possible to advise a young writer because every young writer is so different. You might say, "Read," but a writer can read too much and be paralyzed. Or, "Don't read, don't think, just write," and the result could be a mountain of drivel. If you're going to be a writer you'll probably take a lot of wrong turns and then one day just end up writing something you have to write, then getting it better and better just because you want it to be better, and even when you get old and think, "There must be something else people do," you won't be able to quit.
Perhaps the writer I've read the most of is Haruki Murakami, the Japanese writer, but I wouldn't necessarily say he's a favourite. I read him because I find his work so intriguing, but I don't necessarily feel I would follow this writer to the ends of the earth.
A writer's voice is not character alone, it is not style alone; it is far more. A writer's voice line the stroke of an artist's brush- is the thumbprint of her whole person- her idea, wit, humor, passions, rhythms.
An excess of development can undermine the most ephemeral but distinctive tool a writer possesses: authorial voice. A writer's voice is as individual and marked as a thumbprint, and is a playwright's truest imprimatur. It is as innate as breathing, and can be as unique as any genetic code. By its very singular nature, it is seldom born in the act of collaboration. True authorial voice always pre-dates the first rehearsal of a text. And it is - and will always be - an author's most distinguishing and valuable feature.
Oh, I love labels, as long as they are numerous. I'm an American writer. I'm a Nigerian writer. I'm a Nigerian American writer. I'm an African writer. I'm a Yoruba writer. I'm an African American writer. I'm a writer who's been strongly influenced by European precedents. I'm a writer who feels very close to literary practice in India - which I go to quite often - and to writers over there.
People ask me, 'What do you do?' And I tell them I'm a writer, but always with the silent reservation, 'I am, of course, not really a writer. Hemingway was a writer.'
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