Finding Your Authentic Voice: Excerpt from my book: A Friendly Guide to Writing and Ghostwriting

Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your inner voice.

And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

       - - - Steve Jobs

During the late eighties, I traveled to the Philippines to research the legendary faith healers who were spread out across the numerous islands and territories. While I was there, I witnessed astonishing healings and after my third trip, I felt that my experiences were book worthy. The trouble was, I’d never written a book. I’d tried my hand at poems, articles and stories, but beyond that, I had no writing experience. Where should I begin? At the beginning or in the middle somewhere? Would anyone believe what I had to say? If I managed to finish the book and people read it, would they judge me as a naïve American woman who got duped by a bunch of crafty foreigners? Or would they see me as a courageous researcher who ventured to the remote islands of the Philippines to study an ancient and largely uninvestigated healing arts form?

My friends had never heard of faith healing so I began to fashion an academic-style essay that explained what the term meant, when the practices began, where they were currently being performed, who were performing them, a little bit about the prayers and techniques, and how they varied from healer to healer. But almost immediately, I hit a wall. When I scanned my first few pages filled with technical terms, dry information and flat descriptions, I could see that I was on the wrong track. Writing in this way was no fun. and I was so bored with my own words, I tossed what I’d written and started all over again.

I pulled out a journal I'd kept when I was traveling and I scanned it. I’d written not so much about emotions or reactions. It was no literary masterpiece. I had simply jotted down logistics to remind me where I’d been, whom I’d met and some highlights of the things that I saw. The pages sparked my memory and I started writing my personal story in my own voice this time, as if I were talking to a friend. I presented myself, not as an academic which I wasn’t, but rather as an ordinary skeptical woman who was researching something extraordinary.

I did my best to suggest the flavor of the Philippine culture: the acrid scent of burning leaves in the sugar cane fields, the lilting voices of the natives, the incessant honking of horns in the city and the healers that I met wherever I traveled. I told the truth about my reactions as I weaved my outer physical journey throughout my inner journey of discovery. I stopped caring what other people might think. I was eager to write about what had happened when I got to the islands, my struggle to process the information, who had influenced me, how I had transformed as a human being, and the questions that still remained. It had become a story, not a thesis, and I had a good time writing it. I kept in mind that if my material was boring to me, it would be as bad or worse for the reader.

After many months, I held a completed manuscript in my hands. It was a first draft, not a very good one, but it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. It had characters, descriptions of what I saw, my musings, and it even had a moral of sorts. My book wasn’t refined yet but with the help of a smart editor whom I could afford, I cleaned it up. It was in my voice and it reflected me.  

Do you know what “finding your authentic voice” means to a writer? Imagine you’re mining for diamonds. They might be directly beneath where you're standing or they may be miles away. After a long search, you hit pay dirt and massive amounts of soil are lifted from the earth with the diamonds hidden inside. Once the rough gems are extracted, they are cleaned, cut, polished and commercialized, a process that spans many months from the day they were unearthed.

This is a good metaphor for finding your writing voice. You’re searching for the rhythm and pacing of your words that will allow the sentences to fall into line and sound right. You write a draft, you read your work, you dig deep, you try this and that, and when you finally hit pay dirt, the prose starts sounding like you. You find an editor that you like to help you polish your work and point out where it falls short. You make the changes and many months after you began, you're holding a refined manuscript in your hands.

It takes teams of people to mine diamonds, but finding your voice is your personal mountain to climb. There is a Sufi story about a spiritual seeker who heard about a Rishi (great teacher) living at the top of a steep mountain in Nepal. He wanted to study with the master but he would have to battle the frozen mountain to get to him. It was mid-winter and the temperatures were frigid when he began his climb. He fell into snow drifts, he slid across ice banks, and when he finally reached the top of the mountain, there was the Rishi in his red robes, one arm bared, sitting quietly in meditation at the entrance to a cave. When the holy man opened his eyes and saw the weary traveler, shivering and wet, he said, “You came all the way up this freezing mountain to look in the mirror? You can stay if you're not looking for a teacher.”

The Rishi was inferring that everything the seeker needed to learn was already inside of him. He didn’t need anyone on the outside to guide him. It’s the same when you're searching for your writing voice. No one can show you where it is because it already lives inside you. Fortunately, you don't have to climb a freezing mountain to find it, but it will take patience and determination to be honest on the page.