Most of the helpful comments I’ve received on my writing were from Wendy Dale, my writing mentor. Wendy is both an effective encourager and a constructive critic. She boosted my esteem as a writer like no one did to me before and taught me things I didn’t learn from other writing mentors.
A few years ago, I sent an email to her to ask if I could consult with her about the memoir I was writing. She replied to me with the same file but with her feedback written on the margins of the pages. Among the sea of praises that she wrote there, one critique she gave that I’ll never forget was this: “You sound like an old Englishman with a hat.”
In an instant, I saw the image of Sherlock Holmes in my head albeit he wasn’t an old man for the most part of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel—not until Volume 2. I was a fan of this classic novelist, specifically of his creation Sherlock Holmes. I had reread the two volumes of it, and each time, I read aloud some of his words and savored them in my mouth. I didn’t know that I was starting to sound like him on the page, so effectively that I could create an image of him in my reader’s head.
This made me feel both proud and ashamed of myself, for I felt reduced to a mimic, a mere copy-cat of the British author. So where was I in the pages? How could I actually be in the pages? I realized then that Wendy had just taught me a very important lesson on writing voice and diction.
Say what you really mean. After a few email exchanges, Wendy gave me a list of books with writing voices that sounded closer to mine. I don’t know how she knew what I really (and therefore, should) sound like. At first, I couldn’t help but repel the idea that I should sound like something else when I was just genuinely influenced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and other British authors. It took me a year or so to fully learn to use ‘only the words’ that I really mean: if I’d be honest with myself, those old English words I used before did not precisely capture what I wanted to say. They weren’t even culturally appropriate for me. Anyhow, I enjoyed experimenting on them in my drafts and I felt that the experience of using those words should be part of my training.
Read widely. Listen closely. Such lesson on diction and voice taught me to listen to words closely. I also started to read widely, and it made me a better judge of what sounds right and what sounds wrong, or pretentious, or awkward. Still, I am in constant search for people—L1 writers, preferably—who could read and listen to my words and tell me if I sound okay.
One time, a native speaker said that I was more fun to read than Joseph Conrad, who himself, was an L2 writer. The use of “more fun” was interesting. Perhaps, she was just trying to be nice. I thought I could take that as a compliment, even though she didn’t clearly mean that my writing voice sounded good. I know Joseph Conrad for his quote, “You don’t want words to get in the way of what you’re trying to say,” but I haven’t read any of his works. She added that he is too deep and heavy; and having read Filipino literature, I understood why.
Practice deliberately. Although English is practically our first language, most Filipino writers are still L2 writers and that means we have to work harder if we want our skills to be at par with international standards. We have to read a lot, write a lot, and learn about writing. Why? Linguist or not, one can easily point out the differences between the structure of a Filipino sentence and an English sentence. Talking about brain wiring, anyone would try to understand a different language based on how they understand their first language: the reason why barok English exists, and thus the sprouting of other world Englishes. There’s also the concern of a ‘constantly evolving language’, which should encourage writers to never stop learning and to keep on updating our knowledge.
I’ve been writing for a living for about 11 years now, and I know I still have a long way to go. I guess this is the reason why I discovered a new pet peeve: an aspiring writer who complains about having to work hard to get better. Some of them won’t even try to achieve a word count. Others expect their first efforts to bear fruit. A lot of them think that their first or second drafts are a waste. But please, this is all part of our training. Elizabeth Gilbert calls it the “sh*t sandwich”, and surprise, it’s us who chose it.
Elaine Marie Factor 
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