Mining for Diamonds<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t let\u00a0the noise of others\u2019 opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important,\u00a0have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0– – – Steve Jobs<\/p>\n
Writing in a\u00a0voice that is not your own is like wearing a coat that\u2019s the wrong size. The\u00a0sleeves are too long. The material is bursting at the seams and you can\u2019t\u00a0button it. I know how that feels. I ghostwrote for so many years and I got so\u00a0good at picking up someone else\u2019s voice, I lost my own. I spent so much time racing
toward short, unreasonable deadlines, I\u2019d gotten in the habit of going too\u00a0fast, chasing the clock and counting pages. I felt like a drone, using words\u00a0and phrases that reflected other people\u2019s ideas and visions. That\u2019s tragic for a\u00a0writer.<\/p>\n
When\u00a0I stopped ghostwriting, it felt like I was lifting a sheet and exposing my raw\u00a0skin to the sun for the first time. No longer hidden by the white cotton folds\u00a0that had swaddled my expression for so long, I began to search for my own voice.\u00a0When I found it, I was ecstatic.<\/p>\n
Do\u00a0you know what \u201cfinding your authentic voice\u201d means? When you mine for diamonds\u00a0(search for your voice), massive amounts of soil are lifted from the earth (the\u00a0text) with the diamonds hidden inside. Once the rough gems are extracted, they\u00a0are cleaned, cut and polished (edited), a process that spans many months from\u00a0the day they were unearthed. And you are left with a sparkling diamond that
reflects prisms of light.<\/p>\n
It\u00a0takes teams of people to mine diamonds, but finding your voice is your personal\u00a0mountain to climb. You\u2019re searching for your truth, for the natural rhythm and\u00a0pacing of your words that will allow the sentences to fall into line and sound like\u00a0you. You do a draft, you read your work, you dig deeper, you try this and that,\u00a0and finally, the prose starts to sound right. \u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u00a0takes commitment, stamina and the determination to keep going in order to find\u00a0what you\u2019re looking for. Sometimes you have to dig into the deep recesses of\u00a0your consciousness and at other times, it\u2019s right on the tip of your tongue. If\u00a0you’re not sure if you\u2019ve found your true voice, I suggest reading your work\u00a0out loud. If it\u2019s not really you, it will sound unfamiliar and far away. If it\u00a0is you, all I can say is that somehow you\u2019ll know it.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a Sufi story about a spiritual seeker who
wanted to know himself better. He wanted to study with a master who lived on\u00a0the top of a frozen mountain. He began his climb, the temperatures were frigid\u00a0and he fell into snow drifts and slid across ice banks. He was shaking and\u00a0exhausted when he reached the top of the mountain. He stopped and stared. There\u00a0was the master in his red robes, one arm bared, sitting quietly in the freezing\u00a0cold, meditating at the entrance to a cave. When the holy man opened his eyes\u00a0and looked at the weary traveler, shivering and soaked to the bone, he said,\u00a0\u201cYou came all the way up this freezing mountain to look in the mirror? You can\u00a0stay if you’re not looking for a teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n
The implication is that if\u00a0we are honest with ourselves, we have everything we need to be authentic. We\u00a0don\u2019t need to look to someone else to get our answers or to make us better at\u00a0our craft.<\/p>\n
My philosophy is simple:<\/p>\n
There is no such thing as
good or bad writing.\u00a0If you\u2019re coming from your
heart and you find the courage to tell the truth on the page, your work will be\u00a0interesting.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re coming from your\u00a0head, trying to reflect who you want to be and what you want the truth to be\u00a0true, your work will be boring.\u00a0It takes consistency and\u00a0commitment to find your voice and accept it as your own. It\u2019s important to be patient with yourself because\u00a0no matter how hard you search, you don’t always recognize your authentic voice\u00a0when you first find it.<\/p>\n
A\u00a0member of British royalty for whom I was penning a memoir was distressed when I\u00a0submitted an initial draft to her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat don’t you like?\u201d I asked her. I had spent a\u00a0great deal of time tuning into her voice and thought I\u2019d done a good job of\u00a0recreating it on the page.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt sounds just like me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs that a problem?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes. I don’t like how I sound.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe you think your work is so sophomoric, it\u00a0would be better to copy someone else\u2019s. Maybe you\u2019ve forgotten what you had in\u00a0mind when you started. Maybe you’re searching for the right words but they keep\u00a0slipping away. Whatever the reason, you won’t feel fulfilled until you find\u00a0that connection between your heart, your mind and the page. I decided to read\u00a0my work out loud and some of sounded like a foreign language, it was so not me.\u00a0It felt like I was walking from room to room in my childhood home, dredging up\u00a0memories and trying to fit them into the life I was living now. Was that my\u00a0bedroom or my sister\u2019s? Did I like the same food back then that I liked now?
Was I a soother, a yeller, a people pleaser, an encourager or a criticizer? Had\u00a0my language matured along with my body and mind?<\/p>\n
I\u00a0changed my approach and made a vow to be vulnerable. If I felt awkward about\u00a0something, I wrote it that way. If I was angry, I cursed on the page. If I felt\u00a0sexy, I used sensual words and phrases that turned me on. If I felt frightened,\u00a0I admitted it. I stopped trying to wrap everything up, all neat and tidy,\u00a0because real life doesn\u2019t unfold that way. When I dropped into a familiarity\u00a0with myself, the work became less complicated and more satisfying and I began to
look forward to my sessions.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s\u00a0uncanny how a reader can feel the lack of integrity if you don’t represent\u00a0yourself authentically. When you stop chasing pages and word counts, when you\u00a0stop trying to emulate someone else and just be yourself, you have a chance to\u00a0express your individuality. That will make your work accessible and enjoyable\u00a0to the reader and it will encourage you to keep on writing. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mining for Diamonds Don\u2019t let\u00a0the noise of others\u2019 opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important,\u00a0have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0– – – Steve Jobs Writing in a\u00a0voice that is not your own is like wearing a coat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2213,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2215,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2214\/revisions\/2215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}