The Spoken Word, aka "A Crappy Post"

Writers often talk about voice. “Have you found your voice?” “I like the voice you use in this piece.” “How does your authorial voice differ from your character’s voice?”While finishing my thesis, a linked novel to Clearwater, I lost my main character’s voice. Rita – wife, mother, friend - was speaking a language I didn’t understand – the language of a woman who had no voice. I felt the things I was trying to say in the voice of this marginalized, abused woman were lost in pages and pages of violence and racism, in strings of angry sentences and nasty dialogue. Rita had become silent, lost in a maelstrom of manipulation and cruelty.There were accusations of voice appropriation. How could I write this character? I am not a First Nations woman. What did I know about the motivations of an abused woman?I have not looked at that novel since handing it in to Annabel Lyon in May 2014. Before that I’d received wonderful advice and encouragement from other great CanLit writers. “Stop being so relentlessly cruel to your character,” Larry Hill said to me. “You can write whatever you want,” Joseph Boyden told me. But that was part of the problem. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. Or if I should even say it.So, I put Rita away.***As writers and creators, we have all seen variations of this meme floating around:The Creative Process  

1. This is awesome
2. This is tricky
3. This is shit
4. I am shit
5. This might be ok
6. This is awesome

After shoving Rita on the shelf, I found myself stuck at step 3, sliding dangerously close to step 4. So I changed focus, and took on other writing and teaching projects – writing applications, workshopping, mentoring others – if I couldn’t write, the least I could do was help someone else.Around that time, I began to lose my own voice. With friends and family, I just stopped talking. Stopped telling. It seemed, as it did with writing, too much of an effort to get it right. In one case in particular, thousands of words in emails were edited and revised to clarify something I had said or done that caused offense. In writing, I'd become paralyzed by judgment – “you have no right to write that,” “you need to change that sentence,” “that makes no sense.” Now, I found my very self called into question – my politics, my job, my faith – all of it was suddenly open to judgment. And I was judged lacking.I didn't have any confidence that I knew myself any better than I knew my character.My friends and family, trusted anchors, were put off by my silence. They'd all become detached and drifted away. I’d blown through my days like a tumbleweed and only to find myself hung up on a twisting fence made of pretty, shiny concertina wire. Every effort I made to detach sliced me open in a different place, until it just became easier to stay as still as I could – if I stayed still and quiet, it didn’t hurt. I didn’t bleed.So, I put myself away.I mean, the fence was awesome – oh how it glistened in the sun! If it hadn’t been there, this tumbleweed would have blown right by! I was hung up, literally, on what I could have missed. But as time went on, things became tricky – razor sharp, if I wasn’t careful. Not able to be still enough, quiet enough, perfect enough, it cut more and more deeply– sometimes purposefully, sometimes by accident. When I said, hey, stop it, it hurts, it was made clear that any bleeding was my own fault.So I hung out around step 4 for months and months.  Tried to be as unshitty as I could be, to no avail. I was shit. I was a shitty friend, a shitty teacher, a shitty Catholic, a shitty mother, a shitty feminist. Nothing was good. Nothing was right.This started the final fall into “I am shit” as a writer, too. Life informs so much of what comes out on the page, and this was no different. I stopped writing altogether.***What began my push toward Step 5, both creatively and personally?Watching women silenced on social media.Hijabs, niqabs and right-wing vitriol.Seeing people worried about letting so-called “undesirables” into our country.Women being silenced in government, at health care clinics, and by their spouses and partners.December 6 memorials.Watching my daughter try and negotiate her way in a world where her voice is not as valued as a male’s. For two weeks in November, there was a lot of talk about the cover up of sexual assaults on various university campuses in North America. An unflattering light was aimed at administrators silencing women who were coming forward to tell their stories.To deliberately shut someone up is the worst kind of erasure. Negating someone’s words is not only disrespectful, but disregards a person’s basic need to be heard and honoured as a worthwhile and contributing member of society. It is an abuse of power, a power that has been, for the most part, gained through patriarchal privilege.And I was angry. Because I, too, had been silenced. Where my words once had an impact, suddenly they were insignificant and expendable. My concerns were shot down, my beliefs challenged through ridicule and a bombardment of right wing MRA Stefan Molyneux rants, Matt Walsh-like blogs, and incendiary Ezra Levant Rebel “news” videos. I took it all in, like sucking poison from a snakebite.***I have been graced with a network of strong women and good friends who came together to pull me off that razor-wire fence. Some eased me off, and some yanked, tearing down to the bone.  I needed both easing and tearing – and I’m grateful. I've found peace - a kind of freedom, in that tumble through the landscape – a landscape that is not quite so barren and desert-like as it was.I am talking. And talking some more. And people are listening. I am telling people. In a way, it’s sad how grateful I am just to be heard again. To have my words taken seriously. To be told that my voice matters.I am re-discovering that voice in my writing, too. I finally understand why my character stopped talking. I understand, so much better, Rita’s reasons for staying in the cruel situation she found herself in. I understand her infinite hope, the way small joys keep her going. I understand that she, like me, is more than an outline of a woman – she has substance, she has worth, and she has something to say.I know what I need to do to tell her story. And I know what I need to do to tell mine.5. This might be okay.It just might be okay.