Part of being a writer is finding your own voice and letting it come through the written word. I have found this very hard to do. Part of the problem has been that my early writing was about antiques and collectables where I was commissioned to impart information about some aspect of the subject. My own feelings and personality were not expected to impinge greatly on the articles. This means that I find it easy to write in a comparatively detached and impersonal tone.

Since I’ve been writing regularly on Squidoo, I have written about more personal and even sensitive  subjects. I wrote about my difficult childhood and my parents’ unhappy marriage and about when I had a mini-stroke and the later diagnosis. Both of these were intensely difficult to write. I am a very private person and don’t discuss personal matters with many people so sharing them with the world really goes against the grain.

I think my own voice comes through. You might be able to detect the bitterness I still feel about my childhood when you read that lens. I know that I might sound a little flippant about the mini-stroke but it’s my way of dealing with things and I feel it’s important that you hear that from me, just the way people heard it at the time. I didn’t deliberately put in a few flippant remarks, they came naturally as I wrote but I didn’t edit them out afterwards either.

One of my most recent lenses is about having a lovely garden and keeping pets. Again, this is written from my personal experience which I share throughout the article. You might notice that I’m annoyingly flippant in places here too.

Henry, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

Finding my own voice was one thing, but trying to write in a different voice was a whole different challenge. I decided to write the autobiography of one of my dogs as if he was doing it and I didn’t want it to sound like me. I wanted it to sound like Henry, the Cavalier King Charles spaniel. As I wrote, I imagined what he might like to say about his life and what’s happened to him. As he’s a little dog and not fierce, his voice came out as rather long-suffering and a little querulous and critical in a quiet way. Maybe he’s passive aggressive!

I’m not sure how much further I’m prepared to go with using my own life as material for web pages. Although I am now happy to write about some of my own experiences, I think personal revelations of the most sensitive kind are at an end. Not only do I not want to write about things I would not be prepared to talk about but usually other people are involved and I have no right to disclose aspects of their lives.