Finding My Voice

It’s not what you think. I’m not searching for a way to advocate for myself, I think I’m adequate at that (although there is always room for improvement). No, what I’m talking about has more to with my desire to write more and finding my focus.

Again, it’s not what you think. Focus in the sense that I find a topic or genre to write about. A focus on a style. While I can always use more focus as in concentration, I’m really in need of a voice.

The question now becomes, how do I find it. Believe it or not, I have thought about the best way to make that discovery. Up until now my approach has been two-fold; 1) choose one, 2) fail miserably. I think the reason I have failed to write more is I continue to think I should pick one topic (like education) and write about it.

Why has this approach failed me you ask? Again, two-fold; 1) to many topics of interest and 2) I worry about the privacy of my classroom and the students in it. The result has been blank pages and frustration.

Another reason I feel this method has failed is my self doubt. I think, ‘Who would want to read what I have to say?’ I know, have more confidence, until I have an audience no one is reading and until I write nobody can read what I have to say.

In the interest of brevity, let me tell you what I have landed on as a solution…write more. Stop worrying about having a focus other than writing more. I believe by writing more, I will naturally ‘find my voice’ and as a result good things will happen.

Added to the writing more and as a way of spurring creativity, I am also employing a couple of strategies. One is to use a picture as a starting point and write based on what I see. This has the added benefit of encouraging me to do more of the other thing I want to more of, photography.

Also, to help my creativity, I will think of a title and use that as a spring board. I used this tactic to write this post. This also allows me to have multiple ‘topics’ by creating a list and not getting overwhelmed by blank page syndrome.

Finally (so much for brevity), like my previous post, I can just choose a specific topic and just write.

Regardless of how I get there, In order to find my voice, I need to write more to give me a creative release.