Finding a Blogging Voice

"The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can."

Neil Gaiman

I've been reading a fair number of books about writing recently and they all mention the importance of developing one's VOICE.  Entire books have been written about this and the advice ranges from the absurd to the awesome.

What's this voice that I'm supposed to be developing?  Its a way of expressing oneself in both a unique and authentic way, one of the most potent tools of any writer.

My experiences as a writer of things besides blogs suggest that this is all true. I have developed two main writing voices: the historian and the journal writer.

When I started writing as a historian, I didn't write like a historian because I didn't feel like a historian.  I didn't think that I knew enough history to write as a historian or write well enough to be one.  As I've grown as a historian, so has my comfort with thinking and writing like a historian.  My historian voice has grown as well.  Its somewhere between accessible and academic and above all, aims for clarity.  Its a very neutral voice, but I think its a pretty fine historian voice, if I don't mind saying.

I also have a very personal journal-writing voice.  Its very different from my historian voice. Its not super sophisticated, but nor is it meaningless drivel either.  My journal voice aims to give expression to wordless emotions, which is no easy task.  Nevertheless, its a voice that feels familiar to me, like putting on my favorite sweater.

What I realized over the weekend was that I do not in any way have a blogging voice.  I'm not comfortable blogging yet--what does it mean to have a blog?  What am I supposed to be saying?  How am I supposed to be saying it?  I don't know the answers to any of these questions yet, so I my blogging voice isn't consistent yet, nor does it feel like mine.  It feels a bit like wearing a costume.

Ditto with my novel writing voice.  The novel is my second project and although I can't devote a ton of time to it right now [the dissertation deadline is getting in my way], I like to work on it when I have a little bit of spare time.  But I'm always a little bit unsure of how to proceed.  I haven't yet found my novel-writing voice either.

I'm thinking about how to develop my underdeveloped novel and blogging voices.  Of greatest importance, of course, is to write more and get really comfortable with the format and to imagine myself as a blogger and an novelist, in addition to a historian and journal writer.

Ultimately, developing a voice is about being brave enough to show my real writing self to the world, not a version of myself that I think people would want to read.  Its a little scary and makes me feel a bit vulnerable, this whole "finding your voice" thing.  its about translating my authentic self into the written word and being real with readers.  I'm worried about sounding like I'm trying to imitate other people and also worried that I won't be able to identity my actual voice when I do manage to find it or that it will be wildly inconsistent.  Or even worse, what if readers don't like my actual voice?  Its easier to hide behind my professional historian voice or the safety of my journal writing voice than it is to show myself to the world and try to develop an authentic and real blogging writing voice.

What's the moment in which I'm going to start feeling like a blog writer? Or a novelist? That's the moment in which I'm going to know that I've found my voice.  

In the meantime, the only thing to do to start feeling like a blog writer is to blog more.  Here's hoping that the elusive voice comes around sooner rather than later.