Finding a Voice

It’s more than a little bit ironic: While much of my efforts towards being an author have focused on developing the voices of my characters, I’ve never given much thought to developing my own voice.

We all have one — a voice, that is. The vehicle of self-expression. We are taught to speak, taught to write nicely developed sentences, paragraphs, essays, and whopper research papers. If we are lucky, we find that we have a talent for recitation, song, or a musical instrument and we are taught that as well.

The first and last time I took a class where my teacher encouraged creative writing was fourth grade (bless you, Mrs. Hauschild). For half an hour every day — and an hour on Fridays — we were allowed to write whatever we wanted. Once finished, we could have it “edited,” and then we could create a final draft on paper that had lines and room for illustrations. We could even “publish” and create our own covers for books that would be placed on a shelf with other student creations. I’ve been a “published” author since I was nine years old.

If it hadn’t been for that kind of encouragement, my move to Texas would have been far more traumatic for me. If I hadn’t had the courage to put my wild imagination to paper, I probably would’ve lost my sense of creativity long ago. But I jumped into fiction and started creating fictional characters in a fictional world. My written voice still laid untouched.

When I first read work by my brother, and later by my friend Taylor, I was astonished by the raw honesty of their voices. I could hear them speaking through their work — it almost felt as if they were reading aloud to me. My writing never had that. In school, my writing was beginning to pick up the persuasive, didactic tone of an anonymous professor who was an opinionated and passionate expert on whatever topic that was presented; in my book, I was finally beginning to create characters who showed the sparkle of individuality and the potential for profound character. Yet they had what I did not: a written voice of their own.

I’m finding that same honesty here on the blog-osphere. Article after article, topic after topic, people I’ve never met, with voices I’ve never heard, come to life, expressing ideas and opinions and even small nuggets of wisdom. Hundreds of thousands of voices that are open, frank, sometimes humble, sometimes painfully arrogant, sometimes angry, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes a heady mix of everything.

It well and truly amazes me.

Inspires me, actually.

For all the years I’ve spent honing my ability to express honestly from the identity of a character, a person other than myself, I’ve never spent more than a brief moment or two writing for me.

Until now.