On Finding Your Voice

This quotation is too long for Twitter and Facebook, too short for a stand-alone blog, but too important and fine not to share with all my writer friends of a certain age and confidence.

Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an infinitive, damn it, I split it so it will stay split, and when I interrupt the velvety smoothness of my more or less literate syntax with a few sudden words of bar-room vernacular, that is done with the eyes wide open and the mind relaxed but attentive. (Raymond Chandler)

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I love that.

And while I’m at it, I’d like to address a few VERY fine writers* who are, as yet, somewhat selfishly hoarding their own delightful bon mots and peculiar perspectives of an even more peculiar world. In no particular order (since Kathy P. is always somewhere in the middle of the line and she deserves, once in a while, to go first):

Dear Kathy P., Sue E., Gail G., Ron F., Marjie C, Emily S., Joan W., Donna B., Donny M., Sandi F., Yvette H**, Meg M., Kathy W., Jane F., and Keith E.:

When are you going to start your own blogs? You each have such an amazing and unique slant on the world. You come from different countries, ages, genders, political persuasions, sexual orientations, faiths, education levels, marital successes (and sorrows), experiences, passions, aspirations, and quirky perspectives. Yet, to a person, your writing makes my day any day I am blessed with a message from you. The world really needs to hear your voices of insight, humor, and wisdom. Please accept your social responsibility to make the world better and write where others can find you.

There. I said it.

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*Kate, you already stepped up to the plate. Thank you for sorta regularly sharing your beautiful writing, photos, and mind. This hurting world is desperately in need of fresh young eyes and an honest yet hopeful heart, and the skill and courage it takes to share both.

**Yvette, I know you have a blog, and you just got married, and there has been a lot of change in the world, and all… but dang! I check once in a while in the hope that the Muse came by and smacked you upside the head, but… no joy. So I’ll go the old-fashioned route: please, will you resume blogging? See above. No pressure, now that all our readers will be clicking to your blog and seeing the humiliating date of your last fabulous posting and all….

3 thoughts on “On Finding Your Voice

  1. Meg

    I have taken the first valiant steps forward — I receive RSS feeds and proactively read what’s posted. That only took two or three years.

    Who knows what the next few years will bring!

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