What’s Jack up to? The wild boy is just being Jack and running around like crazy this morning. Jack you have to calm down. I’ve got lots of work to to today.

So it was a busy weekend with my DD’s dance recital which was wonderful BTW. Thanks for all the kind comments and well wishes. She was beautiful and oh so sharp and professional. I was proud.

We decided to sleep in on Sunday since Saturday was such a late night, but come Sunday morning, bright and early, I was tossing and turning, my mind racing with anxiety. I was so tired and all I wanted to do was rest, but rest wouldn’t come. Something was bothering me and it was my current work in progress.

Right now I’m trying hard to write something that will be a kind of break out piece for me so I’m playing with lots of different ideas. And for the most recent one, I just keep getting stuck. Stuck, stuck, STUCK. I keep seeing things unfold so clearly in my head, but not being able to put words to the images.

So with rest not happening, I got up left my DH and went to my other love, my lap top.

Bleary eyed (and out of coffee, yikes) I opened my document, yet again, and started to re-read the same old lines. I was in the scenes, but they just didn’t have that oomph that they had in my head. I was detached.

Then suddenly after days and days of struggling I knew exactly what the problem was. I wasn’t writing from my natural point of view. Although I knew the characters and saw them clearly, I didn’t know the narrator of the story. It didn’t have my VOICE.

I was like some of the poor kids on American Idol when they pick the wrong songs. They know the lyrics, but the voice doesn’t match. Only when they can make it their own does it really work and they get the votes they need to make it to the next week.

So, I renamed the document and started rewriting, changing the POV entirely. And once I did that a lot of my fears and anxiety started to melt away. A little. I’m a writer. Fear never really goes away.
I was smiling and feeling good. Suddenly I was there with my characters, confident that what I was saying was exactly what they would want me to be saying. That odd knot I had was starting to unravel and I could sing again!

For all you writers, artists or for whatever your field is, how do you or did you find your voice or are you still struggling to find that illusive thing called “VOICE”?

Best,
Kwana