The Voice in My Head When I Write

Recently I have started paying much closer attention to the voice in my head when I write. If you are a writer you probably know what I am talking about, or maybe it’s different for you. For me, the voice is the one that reads the words (‘out loud’) in my head as they move from my fingers, through the keys, to my screen. Depending on the topic of whatever particular writing project I am tackling at the time that voice varies considerably. It moves in tone from haranguing lecturer to sarcastic asshole to gentle comforter, and everything in between. Of course finding the words to match the voice is the real trick, or is it the other way around really? The hard part is finding the voice, the right voice for the right application, and then channeling that voice to the page in a way that conveys what the spoken word can, but in (at least) one less dimension. Without the spoken voice and body language that goes with it communicating what you really want to convey, what you really think, can be what feels like an impossible task. The joy of writing for me comes on those few occasions when that task is managed effortlessly and the words on the page and the voice in my head align just so. When that happens the missing dimension(s) disappears, and it is like I am there in the screen with the words talking directly to the reader. Like I have left a part of myself on the page, an imprint of my actual presence, but without all the messiness that comes with physical interactions between strangers. I get to say my peace, the stranger (reader) can take it or leave it, love it or hate it. In either case I did what I set out to do, and they got stuck with a little taste of my voice in their head if only for a brief moment in time. Imagine living with that voice for your entire life. That would suck now wouldn’t it?

One of the best features of communicating through writing is precision that it allows for in language use. You can spend as little or as much time as you want on a given sentence, or turn of phrase, or paragraph or whatever, and "tune" it to exactly how precise or imprecise you want it to be. Those embarassing foot in mouth moments (rarely) happen in writing like they constantly seem to do when communicating verbally. And once you have one of those moments in a given conversation they are basically impossible to take back, and end up coloring the discussion and maybe even the entire relationship with the person or persons with whom the verbal gaffe occurred. If you say something you later regret it can be very difficult or impossible to overcome that mistake depending on the people or persons involved, the nature of the gaffe, and the specific circumstances of course. However, if you write something you later come to regret you can always write something else explaining your reasons for it and suggesting alternate interpretations or begging for forgiveness or whatever. You can do something similar with spoken words but often times the hurt or pain or whatever that was caused is just too raw and emotions cloud everyone's judgements. In general people seem to bring less emotional baggage with them when they are reading something, and logical thinking tends to prevail which translates, I think, to a larger tolerance for offense or upset. Of course the flipside of this is that a written communication, at least these days, may live on forever, much to your everlasting regret, whereas, for a verbal gaffe once the people that heard it have forgotten or moved on, that is the end of it.

The ability to communicate with precision is so very critical today especially when the discussions are related to difficult issues or concepts, and most especially when these issues are of a scientific or technological nature. See links here and here for much more I have written on the topic of the importance of precision in language.