I feel so awful about not blogging more often, but as you know I’ve run off with a new lover called BookTok, and I find the whole whacky world of content creation (lol) and influencers and scrolling to be deeply intriguing. It’s like learning a new language or going to a foreign country. Not knowing the rules, trying to get comfortable, wanting to join but afraid of messing up. I’ve been making little videos where I read from the diaries I kept in my twenties. It’s been something of an excavation and what I see is that this little monster has been at it for a long time. Writing almost every day in those notebooks, blogging every day for years, and now my first novel. I like to say that it poured out of me, or dropped into my lap, but the reality is that every diary entry and post was part of my story, part of developing my voice, part of enjoying connecting with people and being less afraid. I like to joke that I’ve written a coming of age story at 63, but it’s no joke. It just took a while.
Where do you find your voice?
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Betsy Lerner 
Keep it up Betsy! More novels and posts please.
yeh, I’m going to join BookTok too and learn its language to try and push a few copies of my novel. I plan to animate (which in theory is easy with new technology) my shorter stories.
Every morning, as part of my morning routine, I open up a series of tabs in my web browser and see what’s the hap. Your tab, Betsy, comes right after Krebs on Security.
For weeks now, I’ve been glancing at Taylor Swift, then moving on. I catch glimpses of you on FB from time to time (FB reminded me this morning that we have been FB friends for 8 years today). Good to se you here again, and see that you’re doing all right.
I believe there is a question on the floor.
“Where do you find your voice?”
This question presumes you have one. Voice, that is. One voice. By implication genuine, indivisible, and unchanging. Do you? Does anyone? Does everyone?
An argument could be made, and I might be making it, or ricocheting off of it, that there is some core component of personality that can be expressed and communicated in ways that are irrefutably tied to our earliest exercises in, and basic masteries of, language. Is this our voice? But what happens over time?
None of us remain the same over time. Even the most gentle of passages through life is going to change us. Is there some core voice that is always us, to which we always can, even must, remain true?
I don’t know. I do know that there is an editor with whom I have worked well, and who told me a few years ago that she could no longer hear my voice — that certain part of my writing and tone that she had valued had vanished from my work.
Well, shit happens. And it did. And I changed. And that part of my voice was gone. But was it my voice? Or just part of my voice? Some trick I could turn then but cannot now?
I suppose anyone looking to find their voice could do well by attempting, by adhering to the attempt, to communicate as clearly, honestly, and naturally as possible. If you need a little honing of your voice, life will do some of that, and can do all of it, though you may want to engage in certain practices of growth and learning. Your voice is there, and it will change, but always be true to it, and it will never fail you.
Looks like that’s my answer to your question. One thing about my voice that does not appear to have changed over the decades is I do go on and on. And on.
Thank you for this beautiful and wise response. I guess I think of voice in a few ways. I spent over a year writing a book proposal for the Bridge Lady book, trying very hard to sound like a New Yorker article. I was obviously getting nowhere. My husband kept saying, “Use your blog voice.” And I’d shoot darts at him. My blog voice?!? But of course when I finally did a course correction and used my blog voice or an approximation of it, I sold it. Then I think about simply having access to your voice, to feeling allowed to speak, to believing there is a place at the table for you, or making one. You’re looking at a girl who stopped raising her hand in school, not because i didn’t have an answer, but because I was afraid to speak, make a fool of myself, become a target for teasing. Which partly explains why it took me until 63 to write a novel about a girl who stopped raising her hand. Blech but true. And then there is that thing that’s hard to describe but getting one’s voice on the page. That kind of access, freedom, imaginations, chutzpah, balls, love, passion, terror, defiance, rebellion or just the need to lick one’s own wounds and accessing language, sentence structure, vocabulary, rhythm, sound, pacing, etc. etc. Thank you Tetman. Like Diane said.
Where oh where is that voice? If it doesn’t come up naturally, like a geyser or a burp, it ain’t real. If I have to dig too hard, it’s an artificial construct. So let it come when it comes, a capricious muse, zone or zen, playing catch me if you can. Plus, whatever Tetman said.
Diane Melton
To find my voice, I write, revise, rewrite, write, and read my work out loud in early drafts.
You wrote terrific poems in your twenties….
Betsy, glad to read your blogs whenever…
Often when I’ve been pushing through a horrible first draft, discarding most of it, I hit on a patch that flows and tells me who the character is and what they want to say.
Seamus