Rediscovering My Voice

March 5, 2020 | By Jamie Thomas | Reply More

Mine never was a voice to blend in and certain never to be stifled. From the moment I was old enough to join the local children’s choir, I was a thorn in my director’s side, and despite her encouragement in cheerful falsetto, her attempts to teach me balance, my voice – already too big and too bold – possessed of far too much vibrato for a twelve year old…stood out.

So off to vocal lessons I went, a three-hour drive away as no teacher in my small hometown wanted to grapple with a middle school student who yearned to sing Puccini, but needed to start with Mozart, then work her way up by way of French mélodie and German lieder. My parents, who were (and still are) inexhaustible givers and my greatest champions, made the journey with me once a month, sometimes twice.

However, despite ensuring I practiced diligently and mouthing the words to every song I sang so often I was forced to ignore them whenever I sang in front of an audience, they also gently encouraged me to pursue my love of books and writing rather than music. I was a top student in my advanced placement and running start Language Arts courses, and had won several writing competitions, but their pleas fell on deaf ears. I preferred storytelling through song, crafting and coloring phrases with the timbre and tone of my emergent soprano instrument. I craved the thrill of the spotlight and the applause. I wanted people to adore me. After all, my vocal teachers and collaborators likened my voice to a bell: high, clear, and resounding. A herald, a siren, impossible to ignore.

So I majored in vocal performance in my undergraduate studies at the University of Montana, then it was off to graduate school in San Francisco, a path I’d decided upon before I was old enough to vote – before I was old enough understand the enormous financial burden I took on as I signed my student loan documents. Even then I was perfecting my autograph. But among such distinguished grad school company, coming from all over the world, my voice suddenly and tragically sounded so small and unimportant, relegated to supporting roles and chorus work.

There was no shame in it, but it was a far cry from the illustrious diva I’d imagined for my future identity.

I was halfway through my second semester of graduate school when I realized I did not want to be an opera singer; or rather I realized I could not be an opera singer. As I watched colleagues and friends far better than me attend hundreds of costly auditions with little or nothing to show for it, I began to worry that I would not be able to pay rent or have health insurance were I only able to secure the occasional gig in local performances. It was becoming increasingly obvious that was as far as my voice could carry me. Lovely. Not extraordinary. Had I forced myself to continue down that doomed path, I was certain I would’ve eventually despised what once I had loved.

After graduation, I began a career in event planning to pay for my student loans and the number of performances I gave dwindled to nothing. I married, had a daughter, and together we moved back to my hometown. There, in an attempt to reinvent myself and make use of that expensive education, I began teaching group voice classes and private lessons at the local community college. That ill-fated class only lasted two semesters; but in an interesting twist, it introduced me to my next great love: teaching. And, eventually, to writing.

One Sunday night in November of 2017, I was sitting in my parents’ kitchen drinking a glass of wine and reading the news. Of course, I wasn’t supposed to be reading the news, I was supposed to be studying gender equality in high school literary curriculum. I was a year into my second master’s degree in English Education, now twenty-years after scoffing at the very suggestion (for which I apologized thoroughly and most deeply to my long-suffering parents). And like so many women during this particular time in American history, I was angry. I felt acutely my inability to do anything meaningful. Against such senseless hate, such evil, what on earth could one woman do? What could any of us could do to defy – more importantly, to change – a society that has operated actively against us, sometimes violently so, since man first fooled woman into believing she was less than him?

Perhaps it was that I knew the power that dwelled within my voice, though I had only ever used it to amuse and enchant, and not to fight or to change; perhaps it was all I had, and I could stay silent no longer. Whatever the reason, that night, I decided to write.

The outline of Briony’s story poured out of me, and then the first thousand words, and the next and the next until… a little less than two years later, I held the first copy of my book in my hands: Asperfell, the story about a woman discovering the power in her own voice and using it to fight injustice.

I felt that I had finally rediscovered my own voice! Not as it had been… no longer through song but through words, and I also found, much to my delight, that many of the aspects I thought were unique to lexiconic vocal expression were, in fact, the very same I used to interpret and perform music.

A writer’s tools, aside from the pen or, more likely these days, a computer, must always be at the ready, and constantly honed. Structure, literary devices, diction, pacing, and myriad other narrative techniques are learned not only through studying those dimensions of language, but by studying the works of others. And so, writers must read. They must read often, and frequently outside their genre. Similarly, so is a singer’s technique perfected: taught by experts, practiced endlessly, and studied in the practices of others.

The way writers connect with their readers mirrors the way a performer engages their audience, and in perhaps the most wonderful twist of irony, the very thing that distinguishes one author from another – their unique and individual style, lovingly cultivated – is called their voice.

And mine was always meant to stand out.

—

A certified Language Arts teacher in the state of Washington, Jamie holds a Master’s degree in English Education and did her graduate research in the area of gender equality in high school literary curriculum. Jamie is an avid lover of Victorian novels and poetry, Gothic Romanticism, and feminist literature, as well as epic female-led fantasy and historical fiction. Jamie aims to smash the patriarchy one novel at a time, creating characters and worlds that inspire, empower, and elevate women. Previously, Jamie studied opera and received her formal training at the University of Montana and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She lives in Wenatchee, Washington, with her husband, daughter, two enormous dogs, and two mischievous cats.

Jamie’s debut novel, Asperfell, received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, who called it “Wonderfully inventive…sure to win over fantasy readers.”

ASPERFELL

At twenty years of age, Briony has no interest in the rituals of life at court especially marriage. She’s far more concerned with the young king’s obsession with magic and oppression of those who can wield it. When Briony is arrested and sentenced to death for a magic she never knew she possessed, she escapes through a magical gate to the ancient fortress of Asperfell.

Asperfell is now a prison for the darkest and most dangerous Mages. No one has ever escaped. Trapped amongst the hopeless, the violent, and the deranged, Briony discovers the roots of the king’s madness lay buried in Asperfell’s past. And to find a way home, she’ll first need to rescue the true heir to the throne.

Written in gothic Victorian style, Asperfell will appeal to fans of Jane Austen and Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell).

BUY THE BOOK HERE

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