Last month I wrote the first draft of my recently published essay, The Shape of Shame. The initial draft was over 3,500 words and included paragraphs of research, quotes from psychologists and spiritual teachers, as well as threads of a story that formed the final essay.
The initial draft was academic, poetic, and confused. Each time I went back to review the writing something felt off. As I read each section of the essay it became clear that the confusion was caused by writing in two different voices. Or, rather, two different parts of myself showed up on the page.
This is not the first time I’ve noticed two voices in my writing. The original book proposal I wrote in 2017 to query literary agents was received with similar feedback. I was told by multiple agents that the proposal was two books in one. It was a memoir and a self-help book.
The two agents I was most interested in working with wanted to represent different books. One wanted me to rewrite the proposal as a memoir and the other as a self-help book. I remember feeling slightly torn because I wanted to write a memoir, but I wasn’t ready in that season of my life. I chose the self-help route and my first book, How to Breathe was born.
I am proud of that book. I wrote the bulk of it while pregnant with Solomon and despite the debilitating morning sickness of the first trimester, managed to deliver a manuscript that I could stand behind. The book was written in my friendly teaching voice and continues to generate weekly sales since its publication date in April 2019.
My most recent book, Permission to Rest, is written in a similar yet more experienced voice. My intention was for it to read like a mix between a self-help book and an accessible academic text. When I finished up the manuscript I was also in my first semester of a PhD program and feeling the call to shape my academic voice to include more of myself in it. I wanted to weave more of my experiences into the writing as much of what I read in school was written by cis white men, which is often the case in academia.
In The Shape of Shame, I wrote in the voice of Permission to Rest, adding in some narrative pieces. The early draft of the essay did not work because my voice has evolved since I handed in the manuscript for that book in early 2022. The way that I want to show up to my writing practice has also changed. In writing the essay from two different parts of myself I was left with a draft that was insecure in what was effective about it and trying too hard to prove myself through research. Rather than reaching beyond myself to connect to the reader and the collective, there was a part of myself that needed to provide evidence to back up my experiences.
The need to prove myself is more ancient than I am. Both of my grandmothers were writers. One was a journalist and the other a word game designer. They seemed to have much to prove through their writing practices. I often wonder about the parts of themselves that they left out of their sentences. About their potential writerly dreams that were not possible given the times they lived in. About their longings. About their voices. I feel all of this in my body. It shapes my path as a writer and influences the place I find myself in now, the place of recovering my voice.
I’ve been scared to fully write in a voice that doesn’t need to prove anything, yet when I do the impact is there. Over these past months I have spent time unpacking the voice that wants to express and the voice that wants to prove. The voice that wants to express requires me to spend less time talking and more time listening. The voice that wants to express has far more questions than answers. The voice that wants to express is shaky at first, but eventually finds strength through revision and editing.
When I write in my expressive voice the resonance is present. The aliveness is on the page. Writing has always been medicinal for me. I have kept diaries since childhood and the practice has offered a steady refuge to work through the complexities of this wild, precious, human life.
The voice that wants to prove can be a challenge to recognize as it often shape shifts on the page for fear of being ignored, or worse, forgotten. It is important for me to honor what it has been through. It is becoming important for me to unpack its desire to explain, show proof, and cite other works and authors to prove its intelligence.
We hide our voices for significant reasons. At one time, or many times over it hasn’t been safe to express our authentic voice. So, we practice, one word at a time, one sentence at a time, writing what wasn’t or isn’t safe to express.
My writing practice has become a time for me to reckon with my grandmothers and recover the voice inside that has longed to come out and express interior experiences since I first learned to write.
My writing practice has become a time for me to put more of myself into the sentences.
My writing practice has become a time for me to pay attention to when I disassociate and come back into presence.
My writing practice has become a time for me to contribute something of value in this cycle of collective anxiety, distress, and mourning.
Right now, I am sitting across from the self-help section at our town library. I laugh out loud. The irony is not lost on me, an author of two self-help books who is struggling to draw out something more intimate, more real from myself in my writing.
I feel a wave of panic throughout my body. I am attracted to the path of knowing and providing evidence. I have a habit of pushing down or avoiding what is not fully formed. It is dreadful to peek under the curtain. It is painful to feel the unexpressed rage I carry just below the surface of my skin. It is confronting to notice the places in my body that contract every time try to tell the truth on the page.
In first drafts I continue to write from different aspects of myself as both have something to say that needs to be witnessed. As I revise, I practice integrating the voice that needs to prove herself and strengthening the voice who already knows she is worthy. She can be part of these conversations about writing. She can allow herself to stay the course with her practice. She can want to write that memoir one day. She can release the burden of academic life and share in ways that are imperfect, unfinished, and happening in real time.
Attempting to stay in my body and write into vulnerability is what I am toiling with right now. My hunger for presence. To feel myself on the page. To say what I am afraid to say. To communicate what yearns to be expressed, in ways that perhaps, only I can express.
With care,
Ashley
I relate to this so much and oscillate between those 2 voices myself. It's an ongoing questioning. In some ways I think these are the more 'masculine' and more 'feminine' styles of writing. As I reader I'm much more drawn to the 'feminine' - the poetic, the personal. But perhaps that's because I spent so many years in academia. The more scientific, research-based pieces can feel dry to me. But then I fear what my peers and colleagues will think if I don't back up what I'm saying with research evidence, as we were trained to do as good psychologists! Love how you've articulated this dilemma and am watching with curiosity as my own style of writing unfolds.....
Thank you Ashley, gosh I resonate so deeply.
I love your reflections on the different voices and how your voice has evolved.
I need to belong to myself through my writing, I feel it’s my greatest expressive opportunity to do this, this is why I’m here. X