Coffee - light, sweet and topped with a few words

It is a typical summer morning, although it isn't technically summer yet. The hard cracking thunder storms of last night have left the morning soggy with that subtle crisp air...just cool enough to open the windows and have the caress of air flow send goose bumps up my arms.  The birds have been singing continually since waking and the hazy sky is shrouding the blue and filtering the green of the soaked trees.

I am reading a good book right now called "Content Rules" and it has me thinking about "voice."  Last night I particularly enjoyed the part that said a writer's voice changes constantly depending upon what they are writing. That, in fact, is one of the things I like about writing for different publications or writing for different outlets. I don't feel trapped by one voice.  When I write for myself I believe my voice is fairly consistent.  When words are linked together I like them to make a certain sound with rhythm...or music.  To me the sound creates a kind of song that defines each piece of writing.  Without that flow or music the piece is flat. What is interesting is that the song can be two sentences long for a FaceBook status update or the song can be pages in length.  The melody the words create when linked together is what makes the thought flow and what pulls people into the piece.  When words are linked together in a way that stops and starts the reader I don't enjoy the process of digesting the information.  This is very obvious in children's books. When reading aloud it becomes glaringly obvious which authors can link together words in a melodious voice and who can not. Those who do not make  reading aloud difficult.   I typically read aloud everything I write and have done so since grade school. It must have been important to me even back then. 

More on voice at a later date...I need to think about how to create a piece in someone's voice while retaining control and injecting the voice that is necessary for selling the piece.  But this is completely impossible at the present time as I am being inundated with questions, singing and plans for the day.

Jumping In

The blank white page has always been daunting. Twenty years ago it was the journal page that stared back...or it was the article that was due and I hadn't started yet.  These days the white page still looms but doesn't seem as large to me. Perhaps it is because we are constantly writing.  Throughout the day I craft any number of emails, text messages, FaceBook status updates, etc. Switching to the writing mode happens continually.  But the crafting of a sentence is no different in my mind. It goes through the same metamorphoses as it creeps from the brain, word by word, and makes its way to the keyboard. I still feel the overwhelming desire to edit and manipulate words to invoke emotion. And it still amazes me that whatever is being said can be offered up to the audience in so many different ways.

I don't know if a blog is the answer to the unwritten thoughts I have trapped in my head, but I know my Face Book status can only hold so many characters and often times I have found myself confined to the restraints of that small space.  As time moves forward we will see if I can continue to create enough to fill a page.  So here I am, jumping in, and like everything else in my life right now, I will only know I can swim if I step off the edge.