The Unapologetic Voice by Susmita Paul

A while ago, I started speaking of myself in the third-person voice following the facebook status updates of one of my all-time favourite poets.

In my attempt to impersonate the third person voice, I have become neurotically self-critical. Self-criticism, like all life-drugs, is good only when taken in moderation. Over the past seven months I have hung on to the thread of hope that the eureka-ish writing will emerge from the drafts’ pile. None has. But, all is not lost.

third person voice

The third person narrative voice is a curator of events. It appears to the world that there is a distance between the objective eye and the subjective self that is being scrutinised. However, it appears to me that, the third person voice is a misnomer of sorts. The third person voice shadows the writer’s soul and leads the reader to believe that there is a chasm between the eye that sees and the object that is seen. 

Theoretically, the third person narrator can be subjective and/or objective; s/he can also be the omniscient narrator or the narrator with a limited knowledge of the characters s/he is observing/describing. In either of these narrative oeuvres, there is plenty of information involved - both tangible and intangible. So, even when the narrator is only ‘showing’, s/he is already ‘telling’. I begin to realize that ‘showing’ and ‘telling’ are two dialects of the same language.

As the dialectics of techniques ease for the time being, another realization sets in: the narrative voice is important only after I have found my writing voice.

looking for voice

The empty writing patch of the past few months has been filled with moments of extreme self-doubt. Nothing was written for weeks at a stretch. After the dry spell of words, whatever I wrote appeared to be dishevelled. The more they were so, the more the self-doubt strengthened.

This unbearable sense of inertia was accompanied by the knowledge of writers who plod on for hours and years to create something publishable.  The two sets of thoughts seem to be supplementary, but in reality was bordering on chaotic cacophony.

It was blinding madness last Friday.

back at the beginning

It is no easy choice to be a writer. The desire to write infests the mind, body and soul. It needs to grow like a microbe- taking in the impressions of every moment of life. And then the unbearable load of perceptions finally make me write. The techniques become viable only in-between the load-shedding of perceptions.

A new writing blog, Wordiculture, is born in the process. It is no longer a dream to be a well-known author; it is now an organic need to write unapologetically. I do not know if the theorem I propose in Wordiculture will be proved or not.

At this moment, I do not care either.

by Susmita Paul

Brit Writers

Facebook
Twitter