I learned everything I needed to about your writing voice in eighth grade—including how to lose it.
As a child, I loved to sing and even imagined performing on big stages. Then, just before seventh-grade graduation, I was chosen for select choir. Select choir! My dream now felt like my destiny.
Then I met Mr. Rutenkroger.
During our first practice, he told us eighth graders sucked and that nothing good happened vocally until ninth grade. We were essentially wastes of space. Immediately after this pep talk, he had us audition for our sections by singing the Star Spangled Banner. He threw music stands at students who struggled to learn their parts at various points during the year. If you encountered pitch problems, he’d stop rehearsal for some solo instruction in front of the entire class.
By Christmas, the pressure was too much. I started mouthing my parts, and when I couldn’t remember them, I mouthed the word watermelon.
Two weeks before our spring recital, Mr. Rutenkroger was “transferred” after his affair with a ninth grader was discovered. By then, the damage was done. Many of us vowed never to sing again.
Having your voice stolen or shamed out of you is a sad yet common experience. A gaslighting partner or parent, an unfortunate public speaking gaffe, or a social media pile-on can easily do it. But no matter the reason, the result is the same: you’re terrified to sing or speak—and even when you do, it feels like what you say is either wrong or doesn’t matter.
Those who reconnect with their voices through writing can feel mystified, or even terrified, by the idea of a writer’s voice, let alone how to cultivate one.
Typically, when someone comments on a writer’s voice, they’re talking about something they see on the page or hear when the work is read aloud. We’ll explore those elements of voice next week, but for now, let’s talk about how you can connect with your voice, reclaim it if you lost it, and strengthen it.
Where Your Writing Voice Originates
Many writers believe their writing voice is channeled directly from their heads to their notebooks through their arms. But your writing voice originates in your body—specifically, the solar plexus, heart, and vocal cords.
To connect with your voice, the first thing you must do is connect with your breath.
The Power of Your Breath
One of the few helpful things Mr. Rutenkroger taught me was diaphragmatic breathing. Earlier teachers had introduced the concept, but the vocal exercises he shared helped me feel my diaphragm as it sucked air in and then pushed it up through my vocal cords.
Here’s a simple breathing exercise to help you with this: Place one hand on your belly and the other on your solar plexus. As you inhale, concentrate on pulling the air into your belly. On the exhale, focus on the muscles below the hand at your solar plexus. The muscle you feel is your diaphragm.
The diaphragm is also located around your third chakra, which is responsible for your sense of confidence and gut feelings. As you build a relationship with this part of your body, you may notice changes in the topics you choose, or how you write about them, or you might develop a better sense of what flows.
As you gain greater confidence in yourself and your breath, experiment with your voice by trying one of these playful vocal warm-up exercises, which includes my favorite, Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers.
Play is a precursor to the work that comes next: settling into your heart.
Keep Your Heart Open
The heart is located in the fourth chakra, which is associated with your ability to love and be loved.
The heart is the part of the writing voice writers connect with most strongly—especially when we feel compelled to write about certain topics, either because we don’t know how we feel about them, or we have strong feelings about them. As we write about these challenging subjects, feelings flow through us. Sometimes, this rush of emotion is so intense that we experience catharsis or a temporary sense of relief. While this emotional purging is powerful and freeing in the short term, if we stop at catharsis or chase it by constantly writing about emotionally intense topics, we can stifle our voices rather than develop them.
Here’s why: What matters most is not what happened to you, but the meaning you derive from it. To create meaning, you must allow your writing, and the experience, to marinate. During these rest and digest periods, the material settles within you, enabling you to forge new connections to these experiences.
If you’re constantly agitating your heart and nervous system, they can get overwhelmed and shut down. This hinders your ability to make meaning from your experiences and obstructs the next step in the process: conveying that meaning to readers.
To reach that point, you must spend time with your inner kid and the wounded parts of yourself. But that doesn’t necessarily mean writing more dark material. Instead, try this exercise: Grab your journal and ask those parts what they need. Once you have your answer, give them what they want. It might be something far lighter and more enjoyable than you think.
As you invite lightness, safety, and comfort in, learn to speak your truth.
Free Your writing Voice
Your vocal cords are located in the fifth chakra, an area associated with communication, creativity, and self-expression—essential ingredients for all writers.
If you’re a trauma survivor from an invalidating environment, your ability to express yourself—especially publicly—might be the part of you that feels most blocked, or at least it might be the part you’re most aware of, particularly if you feel uncertain about what you want to say or are terrified to say it.
The best way to free your voice is to speak. Vocal exercises serve as a great warmup. Once you’ve done that, connect with your story by reading your work aloud. Observe what flows and the moments when your diaphragm warms with confidence. If it spasms while you’re reading, or the words get caught in your throat, this may indicate areas needing further exploration.
When you encounter these hiccups in your writing voice, try this exercise:
- Go for a walk.
- Invite your highest self to speak to you. If this feels awkward, view it as another form of play and imagine that it’s possible.
- Press record on your phone’s voice memo app and speak freely as you walk. Don’t censor yourself; just see what emerges. If it’s helpful, you can start by asking a question, then let your highest self answer it.
- Later, listen to the recording. Note what you like about your voice and any significant points you made. Do this once or twice a week and see what you discover.
My upcoming guest, Amy Robeson, and I discuss a variation of this exercise during her episode of the Writing Your Resilience podcast, which airs on January 30th.
I’ve spent years working on my voice, and as I wrote in last week’s post, I’m doing it again. Healing my “Mr. Rutenkroger traumas” prepared me for this, including the victorious moment in 2000 when I signed up for voice lessons and dared to sing on stage. I hope you too dare to do something bold as you continue to write on.
Warmly,
Lisa
Warmly,
Lisa
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