“To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself.”
- Albert Einstein
Back in June, I travelled to Denver, Colorado to give two talks at the Denver Botanic Gardens, one of which was titled as you see above: Finding Your Voice as a Garden Writer. While my in-person presentation was an audio-visual extravaganza that included personal stories, rapidly flailing arms (I am a hand-talker), group hugs, a Kumbaya sing-along, AND unicorns (I am not kidding about the unicorns), I thought it might be helpful to share some of the points that I made (minus the unicorns) over here.
I’ve decided to break this up into a series of posts. This was one of my very favourite presentations to give (despite the fact that it caused wretched anxiety for weeks beforehand) and I have a lot to say on the topic. A short post just wasn’t cutting it. Over the coming weeks I will roll out more points.
Find, Finding, Found
Before I begin with the first point, I need to address the meaning of the title. You see, I could have entitled this talk, “How to Find Your Voice as a Garden Writer“, but I was very careful to use the word “finding” instead. I have enough experience now to know that voice is an evolution that comes with you as you live your life and grow as a person. There is no definitive voice to be found, no destination to arrive at full of self-satisfaction and arrogance.
….Aaaaannnndddd. Done. Found it!
Whether we like it or not, we all change. It only stands to reason that if all is going well, we will also change and evolve how we write and what we write about. I have found this to be true for me. I am a work in progress. I too am always in the process of becoming, growing, developing, changing… As I go through the process of living and working my issues out:
- My priorities change.
- I develop new interests
- My goals as a human and as a writer change.
- I let go of fears.
- I sometimes develop new fears (god help me).
- I have new experiences that alter my perspective and world view.
- I learn new things.
- I discover that I am not always right.
- I discover that sometimes, miraculously, I was right all along.
My writing is strongly affected by all of this. It comes along for the ride.
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