Laraine Herring shares some wisdom in her book ‘Writing Begins with the Breath’ that I’d like to pass along to you. Speaking authentically takes courage. Let her words inspire you to dig deep into the core of your message.
“We have been well-schooled not to write authentically. We have been taught to speak what we think people in authority want to hear. We have been taught to mimic, to parrot, and we have seen those who write or speak outside the established rubrics suffer the consequences. We have also been taught, in myriad ways, to hide our authentic voice because we are afraid (and rightly so) of being too vulnerable. We are afraid of being exposed for (fill in the blank). We are afraid that if we’re writing a novel, our mother/father/daughter will think we are the main character who is doing those despicable things. And so we self-censor and ultimately sabotage our work.
How do you know when you are, well, you? The most obvious answer is the most vague – you know when you know. You practice your writing. You allow yourself to move deeper and deeper into the heart of your pieces. You stand beside yourself, detached yet present, as you journey deep inside. You test yourself, as you bring forth poem after poem and story after story from within you. You honestly assess your work. Ask yourself these questions:
Is this the truth?
What have I left out?
Why have I left that out?
What would happen if I added that which I left out back in?
Where have I written around the story?
What is the question of the story?
Have I addressed the question of the story, or have I left it out?”
In the Horse Whisperer, Robert Redford’s character said “Knowing something is easy. Saying it out loud is the hard part.”