VOICE

Voice, it’s kind of a strange title for blog and yet it’s something I’ve been thinking about for quite some time.

For me, voice comes in different ways. There’s the voice that says “I love you”. The voice that  says”pick up your toys right now!” or the voice that says” yes” to your boss, when you’d really rather not.

Those are all our voices and we use them daily, often without really thinking about them.

There is also the writing voice, and it can be the most challenging voice of all.

If, like me, you had a strict English teacher you learned a bunch of rules about writing;

-never write in the first person

-every paragraph should have an opening sentence and a closing sentence

-never use one sentence as a paragraph

-never use run on sentences

The list seems endless and although it may apply in some cases, nowadays most people pay no attention to those rules.

We do write one sentence paragraphs.

If we’re  writing a blog we generally write in the first person using that dreaded word “I”.

So, what got me started thinking about this was a writer’s block for my blog.

As a decision coach I had the belief that everything I wrote had to be about decisions and how to make them. Well, I could only write on that for so long before I got frustrated. Or at least that’s been is my experience.

While this logjam has been going on I’ve been taking a blog writing course. And one of the assignments was to ask people who know you to send you five words describing how they see you.

So, with some trepidation I sent the request out to my nearest and dearest and what came back was quite interesting.

feminist, strong, funny, insightful, non conformist. brilliant, (I loved this one), compassionate, pragmatic, passionate, opinionated, quick to see humour and absurdity in life and colourful.

So, almost everyone remarked on my sense humour.

With that in mind I reread some of my blog posts and I found them to be ok, Some were a touch pedantic and even hectoring. Few of them were funny or even my truly authentic voice.

All of which got me thinking about the strait jacket I had put on my blog: if it didn’t have a decision in it then it wasn’t appropriate to publish.

I’m kicking that to the curb and freeing my voice. I will write on what interests me and what I hope you will enjoy reading, but I’m not going to constrain myself to write things that follow some internal rule that makes no sense.