Finding My Voice
Writing by hand
As a young writer, writing by hand gave me a lot of freedom to explore writing. The biggest freedom it allotted me was that no one ever read my notebooks — no one can read my handwriting — so the fear of an audience or writing for someone disappeared.
But the best things about writing by hand is the second draft. The rewriting stage. When you keep the page open before you and start to type it out. A lot of magic happens here, a lot of things get shifted, perspectives get moved. You know the entire story already and the seeds that need to be sown can be sown.
In every writing related article, you’ll find this advice given: find your voice. You need to sound like a lot of other voices before you sound like yourself. Yes, all good advice. Great advice, in fact. But what does your voice look like? Is there a sign post over your sentence, or paragraph, or, heck, even a page saying this, this sounds like you. Do you decide what you sound like and go, okay, this sounds like me (I think). How do you find your own voice if you’ve never heard it before?
I WILL TALK LIKE THIS AND THIS IS WHAT I SOUND LIKE.
No.
This is when writing by hand comes in handy (excuse the pun). The first draft and the second draft are two entirely different beasts (at least, for me). I come back…
