BE HYSTERICAL

The second writing session on voice and emotion

“Voice is more important than platform,” a publishing professional said during a publishing panel we were on together. I did a spit-take, mentally.

In a past life, I helped pretentious high-schoolers write stand-out college application essays. (Even though I’d written mine about Howard Roark, the protagonist in The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand; personal essay about this pending.) The bad essays all sounded the same, like anyone could have written them. The good ones were distinct like a fingerprint, and I could hear/see/smell/touch/taste the writing. The good writers wrote in such a way that no one else could write what they wrote in the way they wrote it. None of their sentences could appear in anyone else’s essay. That’s having a voice.

Everyone has a voice, but using it is another story.

Voice, in writing, is harder than it looks because we’re not used to saying what we think or feel. Because when we try to put our voice into sparkling prose, something intervenes. Because writing can feel like talking to yourself (in a bad way). Because we’re afraid of “looking insane.” Because too many of us have learned to ignore ourselves or swallow our voice or transmute it into something more palatable to sound “nice” and “agreeable” and “lobotomized.”

FUCK THAT SHIT.

This Sunday, July 6th, we’ll write and gossip for 90 minutes about using our batshit emotions to find our singular voices.

Voice is made from emotion, and emotion is made from the news cycle and middle school, and this seminar will be made of writing exercises to make your voice so distinctive that any reader can pick it out of a police lineup.

This is the second of monthly 90-minute guided writing experiences for paying subscribers, who will receive the Zoom link via email the day before each session.

BE HYSTERICAL: On Voice and Emotion
Sunday, July 6th
4-5:30pm ET
On Zoom
Live & recorded
BYODrama