This is my 100th day of writing a blog a day and posting at Medium. My goal is to do this for a whole year. It’s a challenge set to get me writing every day again, and also an experiment in honing my “writing voice” into something more unique than I felt it has been.
As a child, my parents took great care to wash their respective Southern accents out of my mouth. I was not allowed to mimic how they talked, but rather, taught to tighten up my vowels and reach for the same soothing, generic tones of General American — the “Voice of Middle America”, newscasters, and most actors.
Similarly, I was also trained to write in a very clear, concise, and unfettered manner, strictly following rules of grammar and also Strunk & White. Creative license with the language was not particularly encouraged…or, perhaps, I should say that technical prowess was the highest goal.
(I will be writing a post soon about how criticism and the limitations of others gets internalized by creative people, holding us back from taking risks with our art…it’s a related point, anyway.)
That’s where I started out, and where I still dwell when it comes to writing fiction. I’d love to have a more unique style, and I think that writing every day is helping me unmoor myself from those old anchors of restrictions.
Well, it’s something to aim for, anyway.