June 7, 2018 Kelsey Horton

How to Reconnect with Your Creative Voice

Uncategorized

Hey beautiful friends,

I have been stubbornly clinging to the idea that each of my blog posts has to be a standalone piece of art — a timeless evergreen snapshot of wisdom. Something sacred and profound that will remain relevant for years to come. I find myself trying to hit literary gold every single time I write on my blog, and when I continuously fall short, I avoid my blog for months at a time.

But the truth is that if we hide our writing until we have a precious piece of gold to share:

• We never end up publishing anything.
• The whole world misses out.

(and, the real kicker…)

• That “writing gold” ends up stale. We edited out the shimmery parts in an attempt to make something perfect and literary and wise, and then we wondered why it still didn’t feel satisfying.

When we attempt to look smart or talented or (____fill in the blank with your adjective of choice___), we abandon ourselves. That is the precise moment where we subconsciously slip into performance mode. If we’re not careful, we spend our lives putting on an act and hoping that no one catches a hint of the truth: that we don’t always know what we’re doing. That we feel lonely and insecure more than we’d like to admit.

We forget that “literary gold” is subjective. We forget that no matter what we make, someone will find it too juvenile. We forget that our only real job as artists is to show up as ourselves with our hearts glimmering through the words.

Welcome to being human. Always learning, growing, expanding, and backtracking into the lessons we wish we would have learned before.

 

So in the spirit of doing something awkward and out of my comfort zone… today I’m writing conversationally AND adding a video to my blog for the first time!

 

Picture this situation: Three of your closest friends write reviews for the same restaurant. The names are removed so you don’t know which friend wrote which review. Could you still identify which friend wrote which review?

Would you be able to point and say “OF COURSE my dad wrote that one, he always makes jokes like that. OF COURSE my roommate wrote that one, she always analyzes the tiny details of the decor. OF COURSE my cousin wrote that last one…”

If so, it’s because you’re identifying each friend’s unique writing voice in action. They couldn’t hide themselves from you if they tried.

Your creative voice is your unique fingerprint on your work, and our voices are influenced by everything we let into our lives. Our voices aren’t stagnant — they evolve over time, and they don’t ever fully disappear from us. But when we’re feeling completely disconnected from ourselves, we can take concrete actions to get back to our roots and plug into that voice again.

The video below addresses one tool that can help you reconnect to your voice when you feel lost. Enjoy!

 

 

Peace + Old Copies of On The Road,

Kelsey