Hello, and welcome to the final week of The Short Story Project! I have heard from many of you that you are writing and outlining new stories, and that is thrilling. I love that we are making brand new stories together. I’ve written three drafts so far that felt like they arrived out of nowhere, which is the beauty of a project like this. By playing with words and courting creativity, a story arrives that otherwise would not have shown up.
I spent the summer reading short stories for this project. I wanted to find short stories that most of you probably hadn’t read before. The biggest criterion really was that they had to be available to read for free.
After I read each story, I made notes of themes, subjects, and feelings. I had this idea that weekly themes would naturally emerge and be neatly aligned with typical picture book themes. Pretty quickly I realized this wasn’t going to happen.
After I narrowed down the short stories (I read twice as many as ended up in this project), themes did begin to emerge, which you have been following along with every week (if you joined The Short Story Project late, you can see all the posts here). After the first three weeks, I was left with five more stories, which did not at first have a clear theme. All I knew is that I loved them and wanted to include them. And then I realized that was mostly because of their voice.
Voice! It’s something you hear agents and editors say they want, but there are no clear instructions on how to get there, because the method is something like “write a lot, and then vibe your way into it.” A way to get there (to vibe your way in) is to read a lot, notice when the writing voice is strong, and then figure out why it’s so strong — and a way to do that is by trying to write in the style of the story.
When I was writing this essay, I pulled a card from my favorite oracle deck, The Visionary Oracle, and I got “Cover Song.” This card is perfect for The Short Story Project. Here is what the guidebook says: “There is no artist that starts out without some copying. Do not be afraid of using something you’re inspired by as the jumping off point for creating something new, that’s how every artist has ever operated. You find your voice through the unique ways you diverge.”
Becoming a writer (or any kind of artist) is finding your voice, and being a writer (or any kind of artist) is honing and refining that voice until it is strongly and singularly yours. You get there is through play (as I talked about last week) and also by copying other people’s writing until you figure out what sounds like you.
You read a story that you love, and you riff on it, and try out the voice. It’s like the art school assignment of going to the museum and doing your best to copy a painting. You are trying things; you mimic styles, you try on the clothes and play dress up. But your ultimate goal is to find, clarify, and write in your own style. You write in the style of someone else, and it’s a way to play with voice in general until you figure out what feels right to you.
George Saunders tells the story in A Swim in a Pond in the Rain about how he was writing in other writers’ voices until he started playing, writing something just for fun, and that ended up being the best thing he’d ever written. Finally, after all that practice and riffing, he landed on his own voice.
There is a lot in the publishing business we can’t control, but we can control our own writing. We hone and strengthen our writing and our voice, and then it’s like we plant a flag in the dirt. Here is our space. Here is our voice. Your goal is to write and practice so much that the flag you have planted is large, singular, and recognizable. This doesn’t mean that you only write in one style, only one genre, or only one type of story. The opposite, actually: once your voice is strong and honed, you’ll be able to write across a broader range of stories, if you want to. The common factor is you, and as your voice strengthens and you get better as a writer, you will be able to play with all kinds of ways of writing.
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