Strictly Speaking

I’m reading Doris Lessing’s The Survivor, in an effort to pull my lazy brain out of its trashy novel rut. I’m having a little trouble because the language is both British and fairly idiosyncratic. But even as I muddle through, it is one of those stories that both creates a world and rings true of the one we live in. Her description of a teenage girl going through puberty captures the way an adult woman can observe the process in another person and recognize everything that happens as both familiar and completely alien. That sense of “I know I did that too, but isn’t it just a bizarre way to act?”

There’s also a description of the way that people will pick up traits from each other to form a community. Shared ways of dressing or acting that we’ll admire in the people we want to be with, and adopt ourselves. Her summary is “We are who we associate with.” We become a patchwork of people we know.

Since I’ve been writing more, I’ve noticed that patchwork in my own language. Since I lived in a lot of places, I have some idiosyncratic language habits myself. Sometimes I’ll ask for a can of “pop” to drink. I’ll point to the house that sits “kitty-corner”. Does this go in the “chifferobe”? And depending on who I spring this motley collection of words on, I may get a nod or a WTF? look.

Which is all fine in a prematurely eccentric person, like yours truly. I can talk like a flake; I have an English degree, it’s my prerogative. But the people in my writing are not me. [Or at least I hope they aren’t me. Those folks are kinda messed up.] And I’ll sometimes have to look at a sentence and think, “Is that a Julie word?” My first big challenge is creating voices that sound real and true to the situation. Like if I’m writing about a psychiatrist in a therapy session, it wouldn’t sound right if she said, “So, you set fire to the curtains. What up with that?” Which, I shamefacedly admit, is something I might bust out with. So, if it appears on the page – erase, erase, erase – “Can you tell me what you were feeling when you set the curtains on fire?” And also, I want to make things as accessible for somebody else as possible. If you're reading and thinking "what the hell is a chifferobe?", it can just really pop you out of the moment in the story. Some word choice can add color. Too much and you're just a pain in the patootie. And I don't have enough chops yet to earn being a pain in the patootie as a writer.

When I was in school, a teacher told me that the best way to learn writing was to read. Seems that you can learn from the best in more ways than one.