Writer and runner Ellie Windham came up with a series on voice in her blog Walking In Other People’s Shoes. Here I’ve borrowed her questionnaire to delve a little deeper into the mind of the author of Rolling on the Bottom, an incredible short story collection.
Name: Wilson Koewing
Hometown: Clover, South Carolina
Where do you live? I live in Marin County, California about 25 minutes north of San Francisco.
What does it mean to have a voice? Well I think it’s all about authority. Confidence. To have a voice is to believe that someone is going to read your work and suspend disbelief to go on the journey that is the point of writing and reading.
How did you find your voice? I wouldn’t say I found it, I just have it. I guess if i had to delve more deeply into considering where it came from it would encompass my entire life. I have always been an introvert, but i’m the opposite of insular. As early as I can remember I’ve been fascinated by people and their stories. And I’ve always been very empathetic. I think you have to have that to write anything of meaning. Or maybe the opposite of it, too.
What event or series of events led to you finding your voice? I spent most of my childhood and adolescence assuming that the adult stage of my life would be the same. Privileged and worry free. When I graduated high school and didn’t get into the colleges I wanted to and went off to the one college that did take me (Coastal Carolina) I quickly failed out and hit a very low place. I moved back in with my parents for a couple years and it was an incredibly humbling experience. It’s difficult to put into words how low I went during that time. I guess I mention it because that was when I started writing seriously for the first time. I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to write about or what I wanted to be, but I knew that it took away some of the pain. And I think that what really happened was I realized that with writing I could acknowledge, I could make a point of addressing my own personal pain, but also that I could create characters who had their own pain.
Tell me about when you finally found your voice. Ha. Well that’s a hard thing to pinpoint, exactly, but as much as it will probably annoy so many writers that I say it, it was during my time at the MFA program at The University of New Orleans. This was the mid 20 teens and sort of an incredible time in the sense that the beginning of so much that has defined the last decade was just beginning. I speak of a very general sense of, and I hate to use the word, but “wokeness” or an extreme version of progressiveness that I think was a response to not only the ubiquitousness of the internet and social media, but also Trump and the way that having access to so much knowledge and truth sort of hit our society like a bomb. I was shielded from it, from an artistic perspective, to some degree because what we were doing there was so open and accepting, but there was something undeniable about the fact that I was writing things that were going against the general flow and my fellow writers were responding to it negatively, but I couldn’t quite grasp why. It wasn’t a matter of craft or style or any quantifiable element of basic writing. It was because of the voice. And it was because of where I was willing to go. I think a lot of writers feel tethered to their own personal politics or beliefs when it comes to their voice. I have no interest in that whatsoever.
Define “voice” and why it is important? I couldn’t define it because it’s a thing you either have or you don’t. I think voice is an intangible thing. The reality is that there are 8 billion people alive on Earth and they aren’t all special. There is no heaven; there is no hell. We believe ourselves to be important because we are an incredibly fascinating species of animal. But really, when it comes down to it, there is no difference between my or your or anyone’s death than me reaching out and smashing an ant and ending its life. So i guess the reason voice is important, why writing is important, is because it transcends the individual and has the ability to speak to something bigger. It has the ability to transcend time.
What advice do you have for someone trying to find their voice? I have no advice. That’s not my job. I’m a writer. I’m not a teacher. I don’t get paid to help others figure out something as complicated as finding their voice. And honestly I wouldn’t take any amount of money to do so. You couldn’t pay me a billion dollars to spend my time trying to help other people find their voice.
Bio: Wilson Koewing is on X @jadedwriter_ and any and all other interests in his life and work can be accessed from there.
