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iView Author:
Sriram Rajan
(Los Angeles, USA)

EMAIL:
sriramsr [at] gmail [dot] com

THE WRITER’S VOICE

As an untrained writer trying to wrap my arms around cinema, while finding my way through the big bad world of Hollywood (sometimes with a blindfold on), I hated it when people told me what to write, how to write, what buyers expect, causes for success, failure, etc. And worse, I hated it when they turned out to be right.

But isn’t writing supposed to be a form of free expression, the proverbial hand that rocks the cradle of cinema? Yeah, right. Hollywood was making stupid Michael Bay movies, and writers were making “high six figures” setting up these pieces of junk while I was still stuck with a stack of scripts, a laptop, unheard, and still unpaid.

What was their secret? Find your voice, find your voice, said everyone I met. But what the hell was a writer’s voice? I had no freakin’ clue.

It was obvious. They were all writing what the market demanded. I must do the same.

I had to wear my best red, white & blue American hat, and write the next supernatural thriller, horror, action-adventure, romantic comedy, or whatever The Daily Variety said was in vogue that season. Soon I too would be writing the next summer blockbuster, and laughing my way to the bank.

Ha Ha Ha Ha……well, not really. Man, was I wrong ever.

Turns out I don’t think like an American after all. Who was I kidding? I love roti-subzi and dosas. I can’t stand hamburgers or hot dogs. If anyone, or if I thought at all, it was as an immigrant to this country, and what was that worth?

F*%k this shit. I didn’t want to write anymore. So as I contemplated committing writer’s harakiri, my thoughts drifted to that almanac of life, the Confucius of our times – Seinfeld. I remembered the episode where George Costanza figures if every natural instinct that came to him was wrong, the opposite had to be right.

Exactly. Like George, I too must do the opposite.

So I flipped open my laptop and wrote the story trapped deep within my heart, the one I thought nobody would like, the one that concerned people like me, people whose stories I knew well. So what if they all hate it, at least I would enjoy what I wrote.

So I wrote like the wind, hoping to piss in the face of my detractors before I left the room on a rebellious high….only to find out they all liked the damn thing!

What an original voice, they all said. The voice! So that’s what they meant all along. I’d found my damn writer’s voice. Finally. And I loved the fact that good or bad, commercial or artsy, what I wrote was genuinely, honestly coming from my soul. More than a writer, I’d become an author of my own writing.

And guess what, it’s been working for me so far, and I’m not ever letting it go.

While this may have been obvious to the more evolved amongst us, it took me a while to figure out.

So what is a writer’s voice again? Here’s what I know —

It’s writing that derives from who you are as a human being, and ignores everything that everyone wants you to say, expects of you, and from you.

It’s that invisible, intangible being that exists between dialogue.

It’s what keeps a movie alive even if there is no dialogue.

It’s what makes someone say, “If anyone could’ve written that, it had to be you.”