DAY FOUR WITH JANDY NELSON
“I wrote it like I was talking to myself or a friend and it never occurred to me that voice is just that—who you are but on the page…” Jandy Nelson
Today Jandy talks about the simplicity of finding your voice, and how being an agent influenced her writing.
Q. Your writing voice is wildly poetic, funny and charming. Was voice a major factor in shaping your story? Any advice for writers struggling to find a character’s true voice?
“Thank you, thank you. Wow—my head is exploding.
“I remember in one of Deb Wiles’ first letters to me my first semester, her advice was to just: let Lennie rip. That was a gift. So simple. Let her rip. Try not to get in the way.
“Another Deb nugget about this. In my first packet to her, I had written a bunch of poems and also a three page autobiography. I’d labored over the poems all month and spent an hour on the autobiography, if that. In her letter back, she wrote all about my voice, but not in the poems, in the autobiography! It was a revelation for me and maybe the single moment that made me think I might actually be able to write a novel.
“Obviously not because I wrote it quickly, but because I wrote it like I was talking to myself or a friend and it never occurred to me that voice is just that—who you are but on the page, and so it is who your character is too, right? It’s so simple! That floored me! There’s this fantastic and very helpful and inspiring quote about this by Les Edgerton who wrote Finding Your Voice. He says,
‘. . .the point being, no matter what you write, there’s a good chance that someone else may do the same thing better. There’s only one thing another writer can’t do better than you. And, it only happens to be the most important thing a writer can possess. Yourself. Your voice. They can’t get your personality on their page. And, since
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