Finding Your Voice
Ghostwrite yourself. It’s already there. You already know it. You’re home. Own it.
Subject: Losing Your Voice
Dear Swimming is Writing,
I think I found my voice too early. In high school and college, I liked what I wrote, and it sounded like me. Other people tended to like it too, and I went on to be a book editor. I was trained to ghost write or work with authors to revise in a way that would preserve their own unique voice. Along the way, my own voice got quieter and quieter, until I lost the ability to write in my own voice. How do I get it back? Or maybe that's impossible and the question should be how do I figure out what my voice sounds like now? I look forward to hearing your thoughts, or hearing how I can listen to my own thoughts!
Dear Losing Your Voice,
“I'll be home where I go
I'll be home wherever I go
I'll be home where I go someday…”
From “Crow Song” by Haley Heynderickx and Max García Conover
Just like it’s possible to find home without moving, to feel at home when you’re any place, you can find your voice in yourself again; I believe it’s already there—even if it’s elusive right now.
Your question makes me think about listening to ourselves, which might be the hardest thing to do as a human. It sounds like you once knew how to do that and came to it naturally, early. I love what you said: “I liked what I wrote.” What a beautiful thing to have experienced. Is it ever too early to experience that? As a writer for children, I think: absolutely not. And if you have that voice early, does it ever really disappear?
I’ve always joked my memoir would be called ‘Better Late Than Never.’ For you, I sense a fear of the opposite. But I maintain that finding your voice early is a gift and that there is no such thing as “peaking” too early or “peaking” at all. There is so much you know now you didn’t know then. There is so much you’ve felt, thought, experienced, read, written, and so many writers you’ve helped with their revisions, their storytelling. Voices change, yes, like other styles, sensibilities. And yet, the first ones aren’t gone or forgotten. It’s more like nesting dolls: we contain each version of what came before. They build, fade, return, echo, grow.
You liked your writing voice. You liked who you were. I have a feeling you still like who you are (and believe you should regardless!). I also have a feeling that while your voice is evolving, as you point out, it’s very much still there. You describe that it’s gone from quiet to lost, which feels terribly scary. Maybe it helps to know you’re likely not alone in that.
You’ve been trained to hear others’ voices, another beautiful thing. You have been teaching them to swim, standing beside them, rooted in the water, helping them kick, use fins, float, then off they go. You are probably quite proud of this as you should be.
But it’s left you rooted to that spot on the tile floor, not swimming yourself. Perhaps feeling out of practice. Perhaps more familiar with another writer’s shape, their form, timbre of their limbs dipping into water, moving them forward while you bear witness.
Here’s an exercise I like doing with writers. Does it interest you? Does it feel ridiculous?
Write three adjectives to describe yourself.
Apply those words to you as a writer (maybe they change, maybe not at all).
Apply the words that fit from your list to your writing, your writing voice.
How does that feel? Like a trio of words you’ve picked might be a guide?
Now, here’s my advice:
“Ghostwrite yourself.” Be your own client-writer. Take two weeks—or two days, two months, two years. In your off-the-clock time, treat yourself the way you treat the writers you work with—what do you offer them? You might also think of a teacher or someone who liked your writing in high school or college, those times you mentioned. What did they tell you? How did they help?
It can be so hard to do this for yourself. You’re not getting paid, for one! It can feel useless, fruitless. Like: why do I even have to?
We are not taught or modeled knowing our own voice, finding it, listening to, trusting it.
But you’re used to showing someone else how.
You can do that for yourself.
Remember, your clients trust you. There’s a reason.
And now there’s someone else looking to you for that expertise, vision, guidance.
Your path may be in risk-taking. Letting go. Being silly or carefree. Feeling like a fraud or a nincompoop. Doing something that feels impossible.
What are you already going toward?
What makes you come alive?
What scares but intrigues you?
What feels impossible?
What seems clumsy, awkward, risky, silly?
Your voice is already there.
You already know it.
You’re home.
Own it.
There will be waves of silence, then chatter, then clarity.
Dust external noises from your shoulders, echoes of the past.
It’s already there. You already know it. You’re home. Own it.
Find yourself a kickboard. Float with it under your back. Pretend someone is holding you there, helping you this time. You’re the one rooted to the spot as well as lying in the water. Teacher and swimmer, ready to dip your limbs into the water: your own shape, own timbre.
Yours,
Swimming is Writing