Hearing Voices

If a friend told you they were hearing voices in their head, chances are you would gently recommend they seek psychiatric help. And you might be right to do so—unless your friend is a writer.

I have lots of voices in my head. Okay, so I don’t “hear” them, but they’re there, all right. Most of the voices belong to the characters from whatever project I happen to be working on. But there are other voices up there, too. Critique partners and editors and readers.

Recently I had the opportunity to work on a project with a combination of seasoned and unseasoned writers. It was actually great fun, because we all exchanged our work for the benefit of fresh eyes on each portion of the project. Using track changes, each of us tweaked the others’ work, filtering it through our own experiences, voices, and expectations. Each project came out stronger for it.

One of the reasons we chose to do it this way, apart from the obvious that the more eyes you have on a project, the better the end result, was that we were told the publishing house wanted a mix of seasoned and unseasoned authors. Their hope was that the seasoned authors would provide some editing so that their own (no doubt stretched) staff would spend less time adding their own polishing.

But each of us benefitted. Unseasoned authors may require more editing, but it’s only because they probably don’t have as many voices echoing in their head as seasoned authors do. But unseasoned authors have a voice, too, one that comes with a passion for the written word. As I tweaked my part of the submission, I had all the regular voices up there, as I mentioned above. But now, after having viewed the suggestions made by my partners in the project, I heard their voices as well. I’d write a line, and in review if something stood out to me as a word or phrase that one of them would want changed, I’d anticipate that in advance.

So if you have a writing passion, listen to those voices—the ones that call for positive change, that is, and let them take your writing to the taste of a broader audience. We start with our own voice, of course, and every other voice after that is filtered through ours. The changes we accept, those we don’t, are still up to us. But listen to those voices, at least consider the changes. The loudest voices I hear are usually the ones that have taught me the most about writing.