Finding Your Voice Through Storytelling

By Lacey Gunter

I had the opportunity this weekend to attend the Timpanogus Storytelling Festival for the second year in a row. I went with my parents and my kids and we had a great time.  Some of the stories were unique and personal, some were retelling of an old classic in a new way, and some were just off the wall zany and silly.

I love listening to the stories, but one of the best reasons to come to a storytelling festival is to hear each of the story teller's unique voice.  I don't mean the actual tone of their voice, but rather the way they tell their story.  A storyteller's unique voice is at least half of what draws an audience into their story.  In much the same way, a writer's voice is critical in drawing a reader into their story.

But how do we get our writer's voice or even know what it is?  If you've ever got the feedback on a manuscript that your story lacks voice or needs more of your own unique writer's voice, it may not be obvious how to get it. Fixing grammatical errors, making characters more three dimensional, mending plot holes or spicing up a query letter can be difficult tasks. But there are typical tried and true ways to help you accomplish these tasks and most authors with enough commitment can reasonably manage them.

Knowing how to find your unique writer's voice, on the other hand, may not be as apparent. Finding your unique writer's voice isn't exactly something you can learn from studying writing books or talking to successful authors. So what's a writer to do? My suggestion to you is to try out storytelling. If you can figure out how to draw someone you are talking to into a story, your unique voice is going to naturally shine through in your writing as well. 

Start out small and easy. Pick a story you know really well. It can be a memory from your own life or even a tried and true fable you've heard a thousand times. Then find a small audience, or even a camera or mirror, and give it a whirl.  The more you practice, the better you are going to get and the more you are going to discover what kind of stories your good at telling and how you like to tell them.

Getting Back in the Saddle

Found at quotefancy.com

- a post by Jeanna Mason Stay 

I've been in such a funk. This year started off wonderfully. I had a goal to write everyday. Maybe not a lot, but at least something. And for several months, I was doing great. Not perfect--I missed a couple of days--but really well. 

And then, something hit. I'm still not sure what it was, and I'm definitely not over it yet. It's been like walking uphill through sludge. I just haven't cared. About much of anything, really. I've wondered, am I depressed? Am I just being lazy? What is wrong with me? 

And the wonderful little checkmarks that I used to make to keep track of days I wrote ... They just tapered off. I haven't even looked at the tracking app I have for weeks. Just thinking about it makes me feel tense. Pretty much the entire month of August, a black hole of nothing. 

But here I am again, trying to get back in the saddle. There are two really amazing anthology projects that I want to be involved in, but that takes actually, you know, writing. So I'm starting small, with a blog post about essentially nothing, and working up from there. 

It's hard to start up again after you've lost all momentum. It's hard to feel like you're back at the beginning. But I recently read this statement from C. S. Lewis that I think sums it up: 

"You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending."

What do you all do when you feel like you're back at the beginning with no progress made? How do you get back up and start again?