My voice, he says, my voice—I must find my voice. I hurry home from class to look up just what he means—really means. Just one street from my house I need to curve around the garbage truck, and I wave as Jack and Rob look up and smile and wave. I give a moment’s thought to life in small New England towns where it is so easy to know each other–at least superficially. In my office I look through books and it turns out that voice is me; in effecting the tone, mood, action, character—all of it and how it is presented to the reader.
This morning before I left for class there was a sudden thunderstorm. I stood before the bathroom mirror and attempted to shape my still-wet hair into something socially acceptable outside my home. A low rumble of thunder and a popping noise as when a lightbulb blows but nothing had, and just within peripheral vision a flash of light not twelve inches from my knee. Surprised and curious, then a nagging sense of the annoying need to check all through the house because it obviously was lightning and may have settled somewhere to smolder and ignite after I leave. I find nothing, yet something happened. It is elusive and may be smoldering, just as my voice, in holding back.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology