Voice

Coming back to the writing after a day of work, household duties, and election day, I now know what's wrong.  I've lost my voice.  I could tell the writing had gone flat again.

A wise man told me to copy down by hand, daily, for three weeks, voice blocks copied from favorite novels written in a voice I like in my genre.  First task was to find the best passages from the favorite books.

Once I found the voice blocks, I thought I could by-pass the hand writing since I and a lot of other people like the voice with which I write.  But nooooooo.  It seems voice is not the same in novel as it is in memoir and essay.

Damn.  But I remember what Stephen Covey said about working with people. Paraphrasing what Covey said, the idea is, with people, fast is slow and slow is fast. Writing is like that too.

Take the time to lay the ground work and the writing will go faster.  Eager to get on with it, it just might be possible there are some other groundwork tasks left hanging out there, dangling, waiting to be done.  In fact I know there are.

More later.