Photo Credit: Flickr, Creative Commons
'Whoooo are you?' the Caterpillar asked Alice.
Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I — I hardly know, sir, just at present — at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then... Being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing...'
Alice isn't the only one who's confused about who they are. Personally, I think this is why so many people struggle to find their voice when they start blogging or writing a book: they don't quite know who they're supposed to be!
"Just be yourself", people advise. Sounds easy enough, but is it? Who is your so-called self? Are any of us only ourselves? Or are we multidimensional beings – many people within one person? I believe that to be true... With so many aspects to our personalities, how do we choose from the countless characters inside of us? It can leave us in a Wonderland of indecision and overwhelm, trying to weigh it all up, our muddled mind quarreling with itself like Tweedledum and Tweedledee...
It took me years of experimenting to find my voice while writing my debut novel, The United States of Us. As it turned out, my strongest style was writing from the perspective of a young man on the other side. Since completing that book and beginning to blog, this requires a different voice from me once more...
When talking with other writers, it's one the biggest creative quandaries we face. What tone should we use? Which tense? Who's point of view? What angle should we come at it? Which aspect of our personality should speak for us? What's our style? Are we the expert, the rambler, the ranter, the muser, the comic, the provocateur, the story-teller, the diarist, the best friend, the inquirer or the critic? Maybe we want to play around and switch up our voices with each new post? Should we try to carve out our own steadfast identity, or be free to try out all sorts of different 'hats'?
Speaking of hats, I reference Alice in Wonderland because it is a story filled with colourful archetypes: the crazy one (Mad Hatter) the fearsome one (Queen of Hearts), the curious one (Alice), the lazy one (Caterpillar), the neurotic one (White Rabbit), the cunning one (Cheshire Cat) and so on... All of these archetypes are identifiable from an early age when many of us are introduced to this wonderful story...
Each of us has an inner child who loves to rummage through the dressing-up box and try on all kinds of costumes, to step out of our usual roles in life and play another part. We only have to watch a bunch of kids performing make-believe to see how naturally they conjure up characters, calling on the bossier, stroppier or sillier sides of themselves. All those characters are still inside us as adults, indeed, I think they multiply the more we journey through life. Yet society teaches us to restrain our multiple-personalities, to squash them down and streamline them into one neat little identity, complete with label and status and National Insurance number…
Perhaps you crave to break out of the role you play, day-to-day, and explore other aspects of yourself, and online platforms like Steemit offer us an open stage to do this...
Conclusion:
If you're feeling stuck, or self-critical or procrastinating about blogging, as I often am due to perfectionist tendencies, I highly recommend Elizabeth Gilbert's book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. As Gilbert writes:
I think perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat, pretending to be elegant when actually it's just terrified. Because underneath that shiny veneer, perfectionism is nothing more that a deep existential angst the says, again and again, 'I am not good enough and I will never be good enough...'
We need to get out of our heads and into our hearts, and enjoy exploring all the voices of our imagination until we find our best fit...
Be playful. B open to experimenting. Be willing to give drafts to your friends and embrace honest feedback. Be authentic. Be as curious as Alice as you venture down the cyber rabbit-hole because, to quote Big Magic again, creativity is all about 'living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.'
In this spirit of curiosity, I pose some questions to my fellow Steemers: How did you find your writing voice? Are you still trying to find it? Any tips and tricks that have been helpful to you?
