Mental Tools for Writing and Life

PAID: Developing a writing practice that supports your own voice

Dear Inside Readers: What are you thinking about at this moment? Spring flowers in the sunlight? Protests on college campuses? Other shadows around the world? In this resource for paid subscribers, I’ll connect four mental tools with finding your personal writing voice. At the end of the post, there’s a brief lesson to try yourself.

For more of these lessons and writing resources in the months to come, I encourage you to upgrade to a paid subscription ($30 annual/$5 month). You’ll be supporting my writing, too, which I deeply appreciate.

Keep reading for a free preview — and embrace all the sunlight and flowers you can.

“Forsythia Blooming” © Martha Nichols

The Person Behind Your “I”

• Where does a writer’s voice come from?

• What defines that voice?

• What makes it sound like you?

Tools for Thinking

Your voice starts with understanding who you are and what you want to say. That may seem obvious, but few writers begin with a clear view of themselves.

Think of writing as a self-journey, one with plenty of bumps and twists and dead ends. If you consider it a journey rather than a means to an outcome, you are on the path to figuring out who you are. This is especially true if you’re writing in the first-person voice, but the mental tools we develop as writers also serve us in other areas. They help make meaning of what we encounter and in fighting off despair.

Part of the journey to finding your own voice involves honing key tools for thinking. Writing from a personal perspective relies on:

FOUR MENTAL TOOLS

• Self-awareness
  Understanding your own perspective as an observer.

• An Eye for Details
  Describing everything you notice, using vivid specifics.

• Active Response
  Engaging passionately with the world, books, and media.

• Questioning
  Examining your own beliefs, acknowledging uncertainty.

Here’s a secret. These four tools are the foundation for effective communication in general. Learning to write more personally provides a creative outlet, but it also helps you think about what you want to say and how to express it to others.

Tools for Life

Many people worry about using the first-person voice in their writing, sure they’ll say the wrong thing or don’t have a right to speak. For that reason alone, finding your own voice matters.