What Makes Your Voice Valuable?

If you want to make a living doing something you love, it needs to be valuable. When that something is writing, it comes down to your voice.

As a new writer, I think an awful lot about my voice. Where is it coming from, what does it offer, and why is it useful to anybody?

What all this leads up to is, will anybody want to pay for it?

When I think about what to write, what to do, or where to draw inspiration from, sometimes I find myself with an incessant thought.

I am limited by the choices I made in my life.

It may seem obvious, and perhaps it doesn’t bother you like it does me. But I wonder how it would be if I spent more time learning about writing when I was younger. How would it be if I had never gone to school and just traveled instead? Will I ever get to see Amsterdam? How can I find my true voice if I cannot live out every possible option and learn from them all?

Maybe you feel like this sometimes as well.

The Sad Truth Is…

Choices you make do limit you. You cannot possibly live as a world traveler and also live as someone who is intimate with one forest or city your whole life. You cannot have children and also be someone that lived entirely without children…it is simply impossible.

The Happy Truth Is…

This does not have to be seen as a weakness.

We are all in the same boat. We make some choices and sacrifice of others. We can’t all be everything, and that is why we make a pretty amazing puzzle when you look at everyone from a distance.

The trouble happens when all of the beautiful little pieces go around hating themselves and trying to be like the other little pieces. It won’t fit together that way; it can’t build anything.                                                  Instead, why not realize what you have done to limit and therefore enhance yourself and stand on those experiences for strength?

Realize that those ten years you spent in the Amazon not getting a degree mean that you can share information that people with degrees don’t have access to. The ten years you spent getting a degree instead of going to the Amazon give you talents as well.

But Can I Experience The Things I Am Missing?

Yes. Yes you can. Except instead of living those realities for as long as you would without your current choices, you can get a little taste and savor it. Use it for your writing or your art as just that; a taste. Some flavoring. Not the very foundation you stand upon.

You can take a small trip the Amazon; you can take a class with someone who got the degree. You can get a taste of what other choices would feel like by experiencing them in pieces while you stand solidly on the things you have devoted actual time to. Anything is possible; it’s just that every single thing at once is not.

When we make the make the most of our choices, we contribute to keeping the puzzle vibrant and colorful; full of truth and honesty rather than drivel and insincerity.

Anyone can try to be like everyone, but nobody can be you. Nobody has your unique set of circumstances and choices, nobody has your specific way of relating with the world. These are the real things that you have to offer.

That is what makes them valuable. That is what gives you, and me, the power to speak with authenticity and share things of value with the world. Provided that we are honest and not faking it, or trying to sound or look like every other person in our field. That is how we lose who we are and become rather worthless.

Are there choices you have made that make you feel that you stand out from the crowd?

Are there things that used to be limitations that now can become strengths and powerful aspects of your voice?

Are there choices you wish you made, but can still experience in some way? I would love to know!