I’ve lost my voice. Well, not lost, exactly. More like, um, temporarily misplaced. I know it’s around here somewhere; I just need to move a few of these piles around until I uncover it. It’s been a while since I’ve really used it, you see. I set it down on my desk one time a few years ago, and it just sort of filed itself somewhere between “Dust Bunny” and “Unused Textbook.”

I’ve lost my voice, but by that I don’t mean to say that I suffer that paralysis of the vocal chords with which we are all so familiar. What I really mean is that I’ve misplaced my ability to write, and specifically my ability to write non-fiction. There was a time, way back in the hinterlands of memory, where I used to blog on almost a daily basis, and I would frequently pen two, three, and sometimes four essays a day. I waxed philosophical on current events, I mused on religious discussion, and I pontificated on personal opinion, never fearing sounding like a fool, only seeking to have open dialogue and discussion with anyone who would listen and participate.

I would also write fiction. I still do. Mostly the words flow in fits and starts, though. I’ll write nothing for weeks at a time, and then I’ll binge over a period of days, spawning new worlds and new characters and new events all in one, great, vomitus mass. (Yes, I know ‘vomitus’ is technically a noun, and therefore can’t serve as an adjective for ‘mass’. Yes, I know that it’s technically redundant here. I’m going to use it this way, anyhow, alright? Call it writer’s prerogative. No, I don’t need help, thank you very much. Now if you wouldn’t mind…?) Most of the words I’ve written have been collected on a micro-fiction site I frequent and are archived here for posterity because I can’t stand the thought of potentially losing any of my work should that place ever go offline for good. They are seeds for longer works I never quite get around to completing, so I guess in that sense, I’ve sort of lost of my voice for fiction, as well.

I want to find my voice again. I want to pick up my metaphorical pen and write with careless abandon once more. I want to take the words that I most frequently use to describe myself to others — writer, author, storyteller — and make them my own, for good and for certain. I think if I start writing again, really writing, I might find my voice, maybe buried in a pile of dust, maybe behind my desk, if that’s where it’s fallen. The point is I need to write, so consider this a first step toward that goal.