Discernment in Using Your Voice: February Recap

For being such a short month, it seems like February should have flown by. I feel like I should look up surprised that March is here and wonder where the time went. Instead, each week of February felt like a month unto itself. The weeks felt disconnected and I got to the point where all I could do was ride it out. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, only that my expectations for the month (if I really had any, honestly) were nothing like what happened. Nothing.

The theme for the Literary Happiness Project this month was voice. I wanted to talk about the importance of our writing voices, how strong and clear they should be, how they infuse our writing with personality, how they are uniquely ours. I wanted to tie that to our speaking voices and how we show up in the world. Voice is integral to all of that.

Instead, I struggled to write about voice. Everything I thought or put down on paper felt trite. How can one of the most important aspects of reading and writing also be so difficult to pin down? Why did talking about voice feel like a pep-talk for the shy and uninitiated?

We are bombarded all the time with this advice to speak up and make our marks in the world, and I think that’s why I struggled to write about it. I hear about this all the time. The last thing I want is adding to the noise.

I felt conflicted.

Yes, we should use our voices. What we have to say is important, whether that’s out loud or on paper, and spending the time to cultivate that voice is time well spent.  

I keep seeing this same message: the world needs your voice and it’s your responsibility to show up and share your message. You have an obligation. The world needs you.

I don’t necessarily disagree, but I don’t think it’s so cut and dry. It’s this idea that we must share something, we must have something to say, we have a duty to the world.

Do we, really?

I stand by the thought that we should listen as much as we talk. We should read as much as we write. Not all messages need to be shared, and certainly not with a megaphone at loudest volume. There has to be some level of discernment about when and how we use our voices.

The good news is we can cultivate our voices behind the scenes. We can work out our thoughts and feelings—whatever is in our hearts—within our own homes. It doesn’t all have to be out in the public sphere. Sure, there’s a time to exercise our voices, but if we also exercise discernment we’ll know when to speak. We’ll know when to write and what we should say.

That’s more important than whatever the world thinks it needs.

Working toward a writing routine

This year, I’ve been determined to get myself on a writing schedule. It was my number one goal last month, but I quickly realized I’d only find my way there through trial and error. I set myself up with a daily schedule, plugged it into my Google calendar, then found myself rarely following it. I joined a co-working space to separate my work and home lives, and found separation but also some frustration in this less-than-ideal writing space.

In addition to all that, I was getting increasingly annoyed with myself because when I sat down to write, I was doing everything except working on my book. I know why: I have fear about writing about my life and my childhood, in particular. It’s scary to think about revisiting painful emotional experiences, much less writing about them.

Lauren Sapala, in her book The INFJ Writer, calls it stirring the fish tank. As we write about our own lives, we stir up a bunch of emotional gunk that then needs attention. It’s not a matter of cranking out 60,000 words about your life—it’s also a matter of processing whatever comes up as your write.

When it came to doing the work—both the writing and the emotional processing—I was stalling. I knew I either had to start working on the book or stop talking about it altogether. So, by the second week of February, I decided to do three important things to help me start:

• Using the timer trick: setting a timer for fifteen minutes and writing as fast as I could.
• Writing first thing in the morning, if possible.
• Writing by hand.

The timer trick is one of those things that’s so impossibly simple yet so effective. Set a timer and write. As long as I have a topic and don’t get stalled out figuring out what to write, I can handwrite out about 500 words in fifteen minutes. Sometimes I call it quits when the timer goes off; other times, I’d write for up to an hour.

But I’d always start with a plan for fifteen minutes—no more, no less.

Writing first thing in the morning meant trading some journaling or reading time for working on the book. But, again, it was only fifteen minutes, so the tradeoff didn’t feel huge. No matter what, I was getting words down before my day started. I wasn’t getting derailed and panicking later in the day, which felt a million times better.

As for writing by hand, I kept finding that writing at the computer felt too official. It felt like I had to get it right, whatever “it” was. When I talk about writing this book, I use the metaphor of cleaning out the closet. I’m taking everything out of the closet to see what’s there before I can try to put it back together. And the closet of my memories is a mess.

Writing by hand feels different as I look at each piece. The stakes are lower. Everything is slower. I can go back into my childhood and fumble around a bit. I can pivot and not worry about whether I’m ever following a thought to completion. My job is to get it out, not to worry about what it looks like.

Once I got a handle on these strategies, I wrote 15,600 words in eighteen hours this month. That’s the same number of hours I wrote for last month but almost double the number of words.

[Side note: This time doesn’t include time I spent journaling, which I don’t track. I write about two pages most mornings, in addition to the “official” wordcount.]

Do I feel happier?

Inevitably, we have to talk about happiness. Do I feel happier in my writing life this month?

The answer is yes and no.

I feel happy with my progress, but I’m learning a lot about my pace, which is slower than I’d hoped. Writing like this is a slow burn. Once I get through the making a mess part of cleaning out the closet, I’ll have to put it all back together. It’s going to take time, and that’s okay. Writing is not a straight line, as much as we want it to be. The words come in fits and starts. They pour out and get cut. And, eventually, we’re left with the puzzle of putting it all together into a form that that tells a story.

My other goal for February, aside from cultivating a writing routine, was to post on Instagram every weekday throughout the month, which I mostly did (I missed a couple days). It was an experiment. I wanted to see if it’s worth putting the effort into that platform and, again, I’d say the answer is yes and no. Engagement on my posts didn’t increase, but my Direct Message engagement went up. I had some interesting conversations via DM, but I suspect that has more to do with sharing stories than posts.

If I had to weigh my sense of happiness against my sense of accomplishment, I’d certainly say accomplishment won out this month. I’m satisfied with the work I did and I’m ready to carry what I’ve learned forward with me.

OTHER THINGS THAT MADE ME HAPPY IN February

Reading

I read six books this month, including four memoirs:

• Slow Motion by Dani Shapiro: This is a tragic, heart-breaking book that ends on a hopeful note. But first, the lowest of the lows for young Dani Shapiro as she navigates her parents’ car crash, her father’s impending death, and her own toxic relationship with a married man (and alcohol). After reading some of Shapiro’s subsequent writing, this feels raw and unrefined, but her voice is still there. She writes unflinchingly, with honesty that reveals even her deepest fears and flaws. It was beautiful.
• A Three Dog Life by Abigail Thomas: Less of a memoir, more of a rumination on Thomas’s life after her husband’s accident. Much of it is entrenched in her daily life, but the essays weaved in and out of specificity and elusiveness. I’m always amazed at books like this, ones that aren’t written in narrative form but are more lyrical. I want to write like this.
• The Mercy Papers by Robin Romm: This details the last three weeks of Romm’s mother’s life and nine-year battle with cancer. At times, it was painful to read her raw honesty, but I found it refreshing. I cried reading it.
• Beauty and the Beast: Read this with my daughter. It was fun, of course.
• Digital Minimalism: On Living Better with Less Technology by Cal Newport: Lots of good ideas here but the writing style isn’t great. Newport encourages readers to strip down their digital lives for thirty days, then slowly reintroduce the media you actually need and use. If you want to get a handle on your digital life, it’s definitely worth a read.
• Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After by Heather Harpham: This memoir chronicles an unlikely family dealing with the daughter’s blood disorder and the long journey to the procedure that cures her. Harpham’s perspective as mother and partner is so imperfectly honest. It was hard to read at times, but she captured the discomfort and joy of mothering a sick child well.

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Overall, February feels like a coin toss. Some wins, some losses, some who cares. I’m okay with that. Trying different things is helping me find the path I want to be on. It’s all an experiment—there is no wrong way.

At the end of the day, progress is progress. Every small step forward is a step we hadn’t taken yesterday. And whether it’s happiness we’re chasing or something more concrete, it’s the forward momentum that’ll get us there.

In that spirit, February was spot on.