Finding your voice
Yours and only yours to claim…
I haven’t found my voice. I have, however, found more of it.
I don’t often look back at my previous work. Partly because when I do all I see is flaws[1] but also because my views have changed so much. For a variety of reasons[4], my world has opened up in the past couple years.
It’s more than that, though. My eyes haven’t just opened, so has my mouth. I’ve found a voice I never knew I had. Because now that I’ve found it I know that I’ve always had it. Buried, somewhere.
I’m still finding it. My writing style is evolving with every piece I write. Most recently and most prominently is my mild-major obsession with footnotes. But also a half-conscious attempt to use less needlessly complex vocabulary.[5] After all, it is no good saying something if you can’t be understood…
Medium has been a vital catalyst for that change, and I hope it continues to do so. And maybe one of these days I’ll get back to working on my novel[6]
The point of my waxing lyrical about beginning to find my voice?
An attempt to inspire you to do the same.
Many of you here on Medium have already done so.
But just as many, if not more, are just like me. In the process of finding their voice.[7]
My voice which is mine and mine alone.
Their voice that is theirs and theirs alone.
Your voice which is yours alone.
Speak out. Speak your mind. Nobody else will, because nobody else can.
[1] This seems endemic to creative types[2] I wonder if there is a name for it…[3]
[2] Hell, I still feel awkward labeling myself a ‘creative type’ and only do so because it seems technically correct. That and I’m increasingly discovering I’m not as much ‘logic type’ as previously thought.
[3] ‘Being Human’, maybe…
[4] A long and winding tale, filled with intrigue and deception. Glammed up and rammed into a sci-fi setting I could almost see myself writing it into a novel…I truly have been cursed to live in interesting times!
[5] And just generally trying to take writing (and Life) just a little less bloody seriously!
[6] That thing is perhaps the epitome of my changing voice — reading beginning to end is also reading chronologically across two years of my evolving style. Quite a ride…hence the heavy editing required!
[7] Maybe we all are, always. Maybe those that look to me like they’ve found their voice have just honed the craft of finding it.
