You never get speaker's block.
Talking to a friend, a colleague, a superior, a child, the words come fully formed. Seldom are you at a loss to say. And you never wonder how to find your voice.
These problems are the domain of writing.
- We don't finish what we start writing;
- If we do press publish, we don't like the way it sounds.
This summer I coached a group of twenty-five writers who were dealing with both of theme problems. By the end, those problems dissolved.
Yet these writers weren't taught any formal lessons about how to find your voice, and they weren't coerced into the 'ship fast' mentality with slogans like Just press publish.
Problems of writer's block and voice disappeared once these writers engaged with a circle of early readers—people they knew, whose opinions they valued, and who participated in a community of practice.
So are writer's block and a flat voice writing problems? Or are they the cost of writing without anyone to write to?