{"id":18922,"date":"2017-06-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=645"},"modified":"2017-06-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-30T00:00:00","slug":"finding-your-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/06\/finding-your-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding Your Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><span class=\"drop-cap\">M<\/span>y son Woelke sent this along, from\u00a0Louis Menand:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The real basis for the metaphor of voice in writing is not speaking. It is singing. You cannot know a singer from her speech, and although \u2018natural phrasing\u2019 and \u2018from the heart\u2019 are prized attributes of song, actually singing that way requires rehearsal, preparation, and getting in touch with whatever it is inside singers that, by a neural kink or the grace of God, enables them to turn themselves into vessels of musical sound.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0What writers hear, when they are trying to write, is something more like singing than like speaking. Inside your head, you\u2019re yakking away to yourself all the time.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0What you are trying to do when you write is to transpose the yakking into verbal music; and the voice inside, when you find it, which can take hours or days or weeks, is not your speaking voice. It is your singing voice\u2014except that it comes out in writing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My son Woelke sent this along, from\u00a0Louis Menand: The real basis for the metaphor of voice in writing is not speaking. It is singing. You cannot know a singer from her speech, and although \u2018natural phrasing\u2019 and \u2018from the heart\u2019 are prized attributes of song, actually singing that way requires rehearsal, preparation, and getting in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18922","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Finding Your Voice<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"My son Woelke sent this along, from&nbsp;Louis Menand: The real basis for the metaphor of voice in writing is not speaking. It is singing. You cannot know\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2017\/06\/finding-your-voice\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Finding Your Voice\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My son Woelke sent this along, from&nbsp;Louis Menand: The real basis for the metaphor of voice in writing is not speaking. It is singing. 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