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A Truth (one thought about sharing your TrueVoice):
Become known for having a voice that speaks the truth.
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A Tip (one thing I’ve picked up from others this week):
“Courage is just fear that has said its prayers.” – Anne Lamott on this must watch / listen to interview with Rainn Wilson where they discuss love, writing, relationships, fear, and spirituality.
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A Take (a strong opinion or nitpick):
The level of humiliation one has endured is often directly related to their present level of strength and resilience. Allow humiliation to produce humility, as harrowing as it is.
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A Tale (a short story, today a little longer than normal):
Friday night, we were on the Southwest evening nonstop from PHX to KC. Our A26 and A27 entrance, with 30 open seats, almost guaranteed the winning ticket.
Being able to occupy an entire row to ourselves.
If you sit on the aisle, put AirPods in, and look down, you avoid eye contact with strangers as long as possible so they don’t ask about the open seat until it’s an emergency.
The plan worked, and we won the lottery and got to spread out a touch on the three hour flight.
I did what I always do on flights.
Music on, head back, fall asleep during takeoff and ascent.
And at some time between 8 and 17 minutes later, wake up for good.
In the waking moments, I began doodling, drawing, and then journaling.
Just getting some stuff out of my psyche and onto paper.
At the bottom of the page, three key phrases in big, bold copy came out…
The first had to do with writing and is personal.
The second said, “GO PUBLIC.”
The third said, “DOCUMENT THE JOURNEY.”
I wrote a little longer, but kept coming back to these three short sentences.
I’m not sure if it was a fleeting fairy, an angel, my desires, a whisper from the heavens, or the burrito I ate before we boarded the plane in PHX.
But whatever the messy meaning, it was clear.
It’s time to finish the book I started months ago.
The one that has 10,049 words written already.
The one that is more of a meandering musing on my own TrueVoice journey than ironclad advice for you to find yours.
I took my AirPods out and showed Brooke.
Having her with me in that moment was magical.
We agreed it was time.
I’ve talked about writing a book for many years now, with many different ideas.
A business book, fiction, my own story, etc.
In fact, I’ve written thousands of words on multiple books, an Enneagram 7’s playground of potential projects.
But several months ago, I sat down for several straight weeks at 7:30am with the commitment to writing 500 words before moving on to the work day.
20 days of tilling up the ground and dropping 500 words in the soil.
By many book standards, I’m about 1/3 of the way to a full, shitty first draft, as Anne Lamott would call it.
So today, I’m going public.
I’m going to finish the TrueVoice book.
I’m going to sit back in the damn seat and write 500 words, 5 days a week.
And every Tuesday, I’ll document the journey.
I’ll share where I’m at with word count. Some snippets of the stories. Some of the turmoil and triumph of the writing process. Some photos of the places the laptop gets opened (presently, in a parking lot in NKC, laptop on my right knee, slightly behind the steering wheel, while connected to my hotspot).
I have 20,000 words to go.
40 days of writing.
And then the slog, so I’m told, of editing, rewriting, editing, and rewriting.
Then the fun part of final title selection (it’s going to have the phrase TrueVoice in it for sure), cover design, typesetting, and publishing.
And then the inherently vulnerable part of seeing if it resonates with anyone.
I have lots to learn. And will have lots to share.
Discovering and living out of my own TrueVoice has been the hardest road I’ve ever walked.
And yet, the most liberating.
And I’m glad the muse stirred me up in the middle of the flight last Friday night.
It’s time to finish the work.
