A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.

~Douglas Pagels

Bloggers I Heart: Blogger Dad

I love writing for Writer Dad.  It’s tremendous fun.  Though the whirlpool of words is a ball, the real benefit of the blog is the people who’ve entered my life.

Comments are as constant as coffee; I love them thrice as much.  Every so often, a comment leaves the blog’s basement behind, then leaks into an email… then nine… soon a hundred.

I’d like to plant my flag in new tradition.  I think we’ll call it, “Bloggers I Heart.”

Bloggers I heart are the bloggers with whom I have a running dialogue.  These are the ladies and gentleman who, were I in their city, I couldn’t imagine bread not being broken.

Anyone who has been with us longer than a week will need no introduction, but I’ll send out a sentence anyway.  It’s only fitting I start with David Wright; alter ego, Blogger Dad.  I stole his name, he stole my theme, and now here we are an armload of weeks later.  We’ve collaborated before and will again.  I don’t know how many days have passed without at least a single email, but they were few and probably sad.

Without further ado, my friend, Blogger Dad:

My Feet Never Touched the Bahamas, but My Voice Found Paradise.

Are you writing in YOUR voice or are you mimicking someone else’s?

The best way to show you how to find your voice is to tell you how I found mine.

I used to think that writing humor was easy. My influences growing up were 80’s-era Letterman, Eddie Murphy, George Carlin, Saturday Night Live “when it was good” and columnist, Dave Barry. I ate comedy for breakfast, lunch, dinner and midnight snacks (emphasis on the snacks). I knew that someday I would be making people laugh. All I needed was an audience.

I started writing for a local paper three years ago, convinced that I was going to be the Next Dave Barry. Unfortunately, the paper wasn‘t looking for a columnist. They assigned me to the political beat. While there is plenty of unintentional humor to be found in covering local politics, I rarely got a chance to flex my humor muscles in straight news stories.

While I plugged away at my beat, I practiced writing a humor column in hopes my bosses would see how brilliant I am and would give me a shot. Soon, I realized that writing humor is hard. Hell, it’s almost work.

I showed a few samples to my editor and mentor, Jason Whited. He gave some advice, carefully couching criticisms within compliments to protect my fragile writer’s ego. One of the things he said shocked me, though.

“This isn’t your voice,” he said.

“Huh?” I asked, “Of course it is! I wrote it.”

“Yeah, but this isn’t the YOU that I talk to. You haven’t found your voice yet.”

Though not intentional, my first attempts at a column were merely pale imitations of Dave Barry. My writing was like a decent karaoke performance. I sounded enough like the singer I was imitating, and some tone deaf people might even have found it listenable, but there was something lacking.

Jason’s advice was this, “Write from your heart, write often, and you will find your voice.”

Stop trying to be the next (insert writer name here)

In January 2006, I was asked to step up to the plate.

My publisher made a bet with me that I couldn’t lose 100 pounds before the year was up. If I won, he would pay for a trip for me and my wife to the Bahamas. If I lost, well, I’d be publicly embarrassed. But even if I lost, I was still a winner, because I was getting a shot at writing a regular column every other week about my efforts.

This was my chance to prove myself!

Just let go

My first piece had to be a good one. No, make that great! I wrote a few different drafts, starting out with an emphasis on “the funny” and once again aping Dave Barry’s style. On the night prior to my deadline, I was sitting in front of my computer, cycling through different drafts of the column. I was attempting to cobble something together. It wasn’t working. Then a thought occurred to me – let go.

I deleted each of the drafts quickly and decisively, knowing that if I didn’t kill them without hesitation, I would never be able to.

I put on some music, closed my eyes and searched inside. I had to lay it all out on the page. I had to be brutally honest about a subject I’d tried to dance around for most of my life. I needed to expose myself as I’d never done before. I needed to do it with humor and heart. I opened my eyes and then wrote my ass off.

After reading my first column, Jason took me out to lunch and congratulated me.

“This made me weep, man,” he confessed while looking me in the eyes, “You, my friend, have got the gift. You’ve found your voice.”

I sure as hell don’t feel all that gifted, but I believe the second part of his statement.

I wrote a lot that year, even if I didn’t lose a lot of weight. (Six pounds, for the record, so obviously my feet never touched tropical paradise.) I wrote about diets, my relationship with my father, working out and a number of other topics which people still come up to me today and ask me about. Many people told me that my columns made them laugh and cry. It was amazing to make such connections with readers.

I discovered that I wasn’t a straight up humor writer. I would never have discovered my voice if I tried to stay in the mold I had created for myself. I had to break free and be afraid to fail at what I thought I wanted to be. I am a hybrid writer, sometimes funny, but best when I write from the heart.

I know that my journey to great writing is far from over. I’m sure I will struggle for years to be as good as I’d like to be. Fortunately, I’m no longer trying to be someone else.

I’m singing my own songs now.

Blogger Dad

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