Finding My Voice - Maintaining a Balance

Sometimes, especially in this challenging period that I am presently facing, finding my creative voice can be a real task. What I mean is when LIFE takes over, I  tend to abandon my creativity and thus, start 'losing' my voice. When this happens, I start to 'lose' my pitch, my tone, the personality and the urgency of my voice. In other words,  I get caught up with LIFE and get carried away with all of the external forces out there, which leaves me frustrated. Furthermore, when I feel this 'loss', I feel the essence of my voice seeping away like a damaged IV drip.

As I take on this journey with my writing class and most importantly, with my overall writing, I know that it is important for me to maintain a balance. A balance on keeping hold of my current economic realities and my creative capacities. All in all, I know that I have to keep a studied focus to my creativity, but also keep on being focused with other important areas in my life.

 I feel like right now that I am balancing on one side of a seesaw, and that all my writing is holding on, precariously, at the other end of this seesaw. You get the picture, right?

However, in all of this, I am a spiritual person. I call on Yahweh/Jah at all times to get me through my difficult and challenging days. I talk to my husband who always gives me amazing words, wisdom, strength and unconditional love. I pray, meditate and practice stillness. Ultimately, I know that in order for me not to abandon my writing voice and to keep it relevant, I have to:

•  Keep on writing consistently everyday. This usually is one of the top tips that is recommended to new and advanced storytellers/writers/novelists. I am now understanding that the sheer mass of my writing - regardless if it is good or bad - will become the raw matter in which I will chisel my  burgeoning and nascent voice.
• My writing voice is really the voice in my head. It’s not how I talk aloud, but how I talk to myself, in the noisy cavern of my skull. I listen to myself talk, inside, and that’s the voice I try to get down in writing.Getting that voice from my head to the virtual paper — that’s the trick. It’s not easy, but again,  I try to do it often as I can, and hopefully, I will get proficient at it. I see it as a rewiring of the synapses, so that my head-thoughts shoot down into my fingertips and come out as typing motions, as bits and pixels.   
• Find out what is true. I write a lot, and most of it will be (and is) BS. I have concluded that with  my creativity I cannot filter the BS if I want to find the authentic truth.I sort through the BS until I've learned to recognise the truth, by feel, by emotions, not by any logical criteria. The truth looks remarkably like BS
• Find clarity. Good writing, it’s been often said is clear thinking. If my thinking is muddled, and I feel out of balance, out of synch, then I know that my writing will ultimately suffer. However, I’ve found it’s a matter of simplifying. I am practicing to  remove extraneous ideas and words until I have only what is needed to express a simple thought. Strip all the BS away and be left with the bare bones. With that, I can start writing with a clear and concise voice.  
• Remove the noise. It’s a process of subtraction more than addition. I know that I have ended up with too many words, because I have never subtracted I always want to hold onto things which drag down my writing. If I find that the noise gets in the way of my voice, I am learning to strip it down, trim the noise from the bush until I am  left with the unadulterated  truth.With this process in mind, I  write, edit, and then ultimately, remove the noise. I feel that currently, in society today, that most people have too much distraction and too much noise in their lives to hear their own internal thinking. Too much is going on around them, and online, and they have no time for solitude and for being 'still'. Because of this mass distractions that we have in front of us, we can’t hear our own inner thoughts, our brilliant voices, without solitude. I am also learning to  remove the noise in my own life as well; all those distractions which keep me being unbalanced and out of place with my creativity.
• Use your voice. I know that I am not embarking on a quest for my voice just for the sake of beauty, accolades or a healthy sense of ego; I know that this is not enough; I know that I must use my voice to express myself, to help others, and in some way, change the world.

My writing is starting to come out of a place of authenticity. This is something I touched on with a previous blog post. So if this is my starting point, my reference mark, then my writing will continue to flourish.
Although I do have my days of unbalance and trying my hardest to maintain my balance, I know that in continuing to find my voice is my own odyssey in keeping my balance and remaining focused with my voice and my writing.

Energised By Creating: Now My True Writing Journey Has Begun...

The more I write, the more I feel energised by this surge of creativity that has suddenly come over me like sweet, dripping, melted honey on newly homemade bread. It's like I have a current of electric energy shooting through me, urging me on to just keep on writing and being authentic to my creativity.

Since joining the  'Memoir: Life Writing' class  a few weeks back, I have really started to discover and explore the richness of my family history and how I can integrate it and intertwine it in my novel. I have so much material to work on, that it has finally taken me this time to see what I have before me. Once I was really afraid and fearful, but now, I have this creativity in the palm of my hand, or should that be the tips of my fingers, and I just can't stop writing.

 Within all of this, I have managed to dig deeper into the archives of my mind, shake off my cobwebs and keep on stepping forward in this writing journey. It's been hard, challenging, and at many times, frustrating. However, within all of this, it is helping me to grow stronger on how I express myself in my creativity. I'm becoming more inspired in what I am writing about, thus, I have finally started to shake off the vampire energies of my procrastination that had threatened to starve my writing. I now have some idea why I procrastinated in my writing. Because I didn't believe in me. I didn't believe my own voice. Really, I didn't think I could write. I was scared of my own voice and thus I suppressed it for so long. All of the self doubt voices that I had in my head about my creativity I have completely muted. It doesn't matter how much other folk validate you - and trust me, I've had lots of validation from friends and strangers in the past about my writing - I just was far too scared to let go and really feel my writing and the overall impact it has had on me. I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet, strum my own guitar or sing my own refrain, but I know that I have something worthy to say in the books that I will write and eventually publish someday.

As I read back snippets of what I have written over the last few weeks, I can see my growth. The bones of my writing have now snapped back into place, and the skeleton that I have left behind and been holding up for many years now has meat on it from the words that I am writing and continue to write.

Let me continue to feed my creativity, fatten up on my writing and become genuinely nourished and nurtured once again. Because this hunger that I have for my creativity is truly propelling me and urging me on to continue this sometimes fraught journey and path that I have decided to choose for myself.

This writer refuses to starve...