I Hate Your Voice

I had just finished a phone call with an incoming student and was jotting down my notes when a shadow cast itself over my little cubby. I glanced over my shoulder to see the overly fake-helpful face of a coworker blocking the narrow entrance to my corner.

Yay.

“What’s up?” I asked, noticing her pudgy fingers fidgeting with my fliers.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, as if taking notice of me for the first time. “I just heard you on the phone and wanted to make sure you were done. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I hate the sound of your voice.”

The words dangled in the air for a moment as I paused, waiting for her to continue. I took a deep breath as I slowly set the pen down and pivoted to look at her face-on. “What?”

“You’re loud and irritating, and your voice grates on my nerves,” she huffed, shifting from one foot to the other as I stared at her. “Ugh. See, you’re taking this the wrong way, and I said not to take it the wrong way.”

“Sorry, is there a right way to take that?”

“Look,” she snapped, “I am trying to give you constructive criticism here. To help you.”

“By saying you hate my voice?”

“YES!” she yelled louder than I think she meant to. She certainly lowered her voice as various sets of eyeballs across the room looked over at her. “Yes. It’s something you need to work on, because you’ll never get anywhere with that voice. It’s too annoying. Don’t take that the wrong way.”

She scurried off as her supervisor walked in, while I sat for a few moments trying to figure out exactly what in the hell had just happened.

I think about that interaction a lot when I’m sitting down to edit someone else’s work. I relate a lot of things in this blog back to the idea of how it fits into one’s story, but voice – how one tells the story – is just as important. In the writing sense, voice is an author’s particular perspective, style, and vernacular in a piece, either overall or for a specific character. Voice is what evokes a response from the reader; it is the soul that gives the piece life.

Every writer’s voice is a little bit different. As a reader, you aren’t going to love every story or article you come across, and one person’s favorite piece might leave you scratching your head wondering “why?” As an editor, you have to weigh a lot of factors into any suggestions and changes you make. It’s not just a matter of whether the grammar is right and everything spelled properly; an editor’s stamp of approval before publication is tying that piece to the editor’s and publisher’s reputation. The “voice” of a particular magazine or web site might not mesh well with the voice of a particular author, for example. Sometimes things can be tweaked in a piece to make it fit better, and other times it cannot.

The definition of constructive criticism is “criticism or advice that is useful and intended to help or improve something.” Useful can be a subjective term, however, so let’s focus on the key word here: Constructive. To construct means to build, so constructive criticism gives the critiqued something to build on. One of the hardest things I’ve seen that young writers struggle with is the lack of constructive criticism regarding their work when they’re just starting out. Rejection letters are commonplace, but almost never provide anything specific about why a particular piece didn’t fit the mold for the publisher. The manpower required to do so in many cases is too much for most publications to provide specific feedback to every aspiring Hunter S. Thompson sending a query. One of the things I like most about being at this stage in RivalCast’s growth is that there is a little more time to provide that kind of feedback and help people, rather than just sending back a form letter along the lines of “I hate your voice.” It’s one of the things I coach to when I’m training someone to be an effective proofreader, editor, or any type of role that requires assessment of another person’s work. It takes practice to find that balance of praise for what you like or is done right and honesty about what things can be improved…and suggestions for how to make those improvements. What a really good editor does is find ways to help an author refine their voice to give it more impact.

It’s also what a really good leader does.