Happy New Year to you all dear ones. I hope you enjoyed Christmas and New Year as much as I did. Well, Christmas anyway, some fool gave me the end/start of year plague so while the fireworks went off at midnight I wearily raised a toast with my parents and went to bed. Rock and roll indeed.
Anyway, I'm on the mend now and have been spending my sofa-filled days thinking of what wonderful publishing related jewels I could bring you in the New Year. I understand the grievance you must have felt in my absence since my last post, this was due to me thinking it was a great idea to fasten two longs bits of plastic? Metal? I actually don't know...anyway something, to my feet and hurtle down a mountain in the snow. Skiing I believe they call it, not that I'm sure that's what I was doing, but I got down the mountain in one piece so that's all that matters.
Now I bet you're expecting me to reel off a list of books I'd like to read this year in true New Year's resolution style? Well I'm not.
This year, 2013, I'm going to start with a little bit of schizophrenia. What better way to start the year? "Explain please" you cry in ernest, well OK. Now don't think I'm crazy, but have you ever noticed what voice you read with in your head? I noticed, when revising for our law exam, that to be able to concentrate I have to read out loud but in order not to have slippers thrown at my head I have to read out loud in my head. Following? Good, it doesn't seem that weird yet does it. Until, however, I noticed that I couldn't identify the voice reading. It didn't sound quite like me, though I think it's considerably hard to know what you sound like. I once heard myself on a tape recorder and thought I was a boy. I voiced this thought to my mother who is usually quite receptive to my 'quirkiness' shall we kindly call it, actually raised her eyebrows and when I announced "I shall blog about this" just replied with a mmmm. At the time I took this as 'yes, good idea darling' but may, in hindsight have been 'your funeral darling'. See what revision does to the sanity?
Later, when I returned to my revision, about half a page down, I noticed it definitely wasn't my voice this time, it was Stephen Fry. Now stop it, stop edging away from your screen and come back at once, it's not as insane as it may appear. I did not believe that Stephen Fry was in my head, as delightful as that sounds, but I had been listening to the Harry Potter talking books earlier that day while tidying (I find it impossible to tidy without an audiobook and Stephen does read them so sublimely). So while I had been absentmindedly listening to Mr Fry and tidying, my brain must have got so used to hearing his voice that when I had to listen to someone talking from inside my head for revision purposes it was his voice that came out. This makes perfect scientific sense I assure you.
It's certainly made revision much more entertaining. I watched an episode of Gavin and Stacey and suddenly I was revising in a welsh accent, I can't even do a welsh accent but the one in my head is perfect. It can be an irritating habit, for a while I couldn't stop reading in a 40s wartime radio presenter-voice, goodness knows where that came from, and found I was listening more to the voice than what he/I was saying...Ok that last sentence did sound a bit crazy but I bet you it happens to everyone.
So challenge of the New Year, identify your 'reading-allowed-in-your-head-voice' or 'head voice' as it shall be more affectionately known. Just try sitting down with a book, paper, magazine or anything and try reading allowed in your head and try thinking about who or what the voice sounds like. It will probably sound like you the first time so if you trust me and want to experiment with your mentality, go and listen to or watch something with prominent and memorable voices and I BET YOU when you read something again you'll get a pleasant surprise.
If not, and it turns out it is just me, um well, in the words of Lewis Caroll.
“You're mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But I'll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”
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