Finding Your Voice

How do you find your writing voice?  What does it take to unleash the voice inside your head to spew its literary magic upon the world?

I read somewhere that we have three sets of vocabulary -- one for speaking, one for writing, and one for reading.  I can certainly agree with that, and it makes sense that the level of vocabulary we use for writing would undoubtedly affect voice.

I have a great vocabulary -- for reading, but if you were to sit down and talk to me, you would not likely be dazzled by my eloquence.  I'm plain-spoken, and I have a potty mouth, and in my head, I'm pretty sure my voice has a slight British accent.  Why?  I haven't a clue.  I live in Canada.

When I write, there is a disconnect between what is going on in my head and what is going down on paper, and to bridge the gap I use the thesaurus.  A lot.  I know, I know, writers are not supposed to do this, as it supposedly makes the writing forced or there is danger of using a word incorrectly, but I don't search for new and unique words so much as the right word that I cannot seem to find when I write.

I Googled today on how to find your voice and discovered this helpful blog post by Jeff Goins.

If nothing else, I promised myself to dig deep and be honest in my writing, and I continue to try to do that.  I hope that will be the key to finding my voice. It's probably all just practice :)
 I would be interested in your insights.

Not the Education I Expected

Finally! I thought as I enrolled in the creative writing course I'd had my eye on for months.  I'd passed the prerequisites, I'd been writing for seven or eight years, and I was ready for feedback on my writing from an academic standpoint.  I figured I'd been around long enough that I wasn't going to learn anything earth-shattering.

I was wrong.

My eyes were opened to writing in a way that I had not been writing before.  I had metaphors emerge in my short stories.  I developed characters to another level.  I wrote with more purpose.  I received feedback bordering on profound.

Maybe it was just me and the point I was at in my writing "career" that this course held so much meaning for me.  Maybe I tried a little harder because I was receiving a grade.  Maybe it really was that good of a course lol.

Having all the information I needed in an organized way and being required to use the information to produce something specific was enlightening and incredibly instructive compared to my usual fumbling about.  I do so much reading on how to write, it becomes overwhelming to try to keep track of what I've learned.  There's plenty of great advice out there, and I still scour the internet for information I can apply to my writing, but this course was everything I needed all in one place.  And I have the notes all in one place.

You really never know what might inspire you, and I was definitely inspired.  To the point where I would love to enroll full time and complete an honours degree in creative writing.

Good luck with that!  I need to work.  Full time.

It is possible, but it sure wouldn't be easy.  But the hardest things are the best, right?