Saturday Tirade: My Voice

I’ve been told I have a voice that is all my own, but I don’t seem to hear it when I write. I’ve been searching for my voice for a long time now.

I hear other people talk and long for their clarity of thought, I read writings, follow blogs and wish I had what they have. Somehow my writing doesn’t seem good enough. I keep feeling like I’m falling short.

And the hunt goes on. I’m constantly trying to find my voice. My niche. The essence of my blog. The truth of my writing. And it evades me, like a game of hide and seek, only I can’t seem to seek what’s hiding.

I started writing a long time back. In school I wrote a diary and kept it hidden. I have wacky dreams so in high school I started a new journal to track them. In college I wrote for a website. In the corporate world I dabbled with company newsletters.

Then I started this blog. Yep, I’ve been blogging for 10 years. I’ve also done some travel writing, some creative writing, some script writing, documentation and some other forms of writing I don’t even remember. And yet, I don’t always feel like a writer.

The other day as I was clicking around my hard disk I remembered my writing archives. I thought I used to write well, but reading what I wrote in the early 2000’s now, makes me want to laugh. Could I have been so simple, so naive, so green with words.

Looking back my writing seems to have come a long way. Yet I know there is a long way to go too. There is so much I must learn. Yes, there are a lot of ways to do this, and the list maybe endless. Just keep writing you say. Take a course. Read more. Follow other writers... and so on.

But I think aside from all this, I also need to start from the beginning. Or at least from the beginnings I have documented. I need to go back and revisit my old words. Read them, understand them, not change them and move forward.

It is with this in mind that I’m thinking of spending the next couple of weeks revisiting and posting my old words. I’m going to be sharing what I had written 10 to 15 years ago with my thoughts on them from now.

Do stop by and share your thoughts too. Do let me know how you think I could find my voice and make my writing better. And don’t miss out on having a good laugh at the writings of a young starry-eyed gullible girl. :)