Introduction to Writers’ Inner Voices

The idea that writers “hear” the voices of their characters is a common one. Some writers even go as far as to claim that the characters that people their narratives seem to somehow write themselves: that they, the writer, are a mere conduit for voices that appear to have lives all of their own.

The aim of the Writers’ Inner Voices project is to try to understand writers’ and storytellers’ inner speech and the role that the inner voice or voices play in the process of literary creation.

Many writers – from William Blake, to Charles Dickens, to Joseph Conrad, to Philip K. Dick – have written or talked about experiencing auditory verbal hallucinations, or hearing voices that others cannot hear. The Writers’ Inner Voices project also aims to explore what relationship there might be, if any, between writers’ experiences and the experience of hearing voices.

During the 2014 Edinburgh International Book Festival, as part of the Conversations with Ourselves strand of events, authors and storytellers were  interviewed about their creative process and finding out more about the ways that writers and storytellers imagine, hear, listen to and converse with the voices of their characters. You can read more about the project on the blog, where the interviews with authors and storytellers during the festival are kept.

https://writersinnervoices.com/

The White Pube - One of the best 'Creative' Talk's I've ever been to!

I'm just out of the weekly Artist / Curator / Writer Talk at Newcastle University and am totally buzzing and fired up. This week was 'The White Pube' "the collaborative identity of Gabrielle de la Puente and Zarina Muhammad under which [they] write criticism and (sometimes) curate. 



It is based at thewhitepube.com and also on Instagram and Twitter as @thewhitepube. 

[They] publish a new text every Sunday, mostly exhibition reviews but every so often baby essays filed under art thoughts. 

[They] started writing about art because [they thought] everything else was boring/overly academic/white nonsense////and male. 

Every review is a personal reaction, and a record of an encounter with an aesthetic experience. [They] wanna write GOOD ~ have politix ~ n call out the general bullshit that stops a lot of us even wantin 2 go to galleries."

Their presentation was equally as entertaining as their writing is, and it was a pure joy to listen to them freely discuss matters that simply many other creatives are too scared to approach. I'm thinking in particular of the fact that they share their accounts with readers and thus highlight the institutions that simply fail to pay a fair wage. 

It is too common that artists / writers / musicians / curators are paid a minimal fee without travel expenses and accommodation. If we all shared our accounts online it would show which institutions are good and bad at paying artists.

I feel there is a bigger conversation that needs to happen here, so please watch this space!