Too Attached to Words
It isn’t as if it is entirely news to me… but a recent round of being edited for publication has really rubbed in how attached I am to the sound of my own ‘voice’.
I’ve been working with Philip Endean, SJ, editor of The Way, to get an article ready for the latest issue and I realise I’ve been a difficult author. I’ve been adapting a piece given orally at the Loyola Hall Seminar on Spiritual Accompaniment into something that can be read off paper. My written style tends to the oral anyway, which stands me in good stead for preaching but makes me awkward on the written page. And this piece I wrote deliberately densely, playing with the weight of words, to evoke a feeling, a memory, an experience. Philip’s admirable outlook is that if a sentence takes two readings it needs editing. He has his readers to think about but I have been more wedded to the words than the communication. Every cut and every elucidation I’ve taken personally–I want it to sound like me.
4 comments November 8th, 2006