My Blogging Voice

Photo by Roberto Kaplan

Today's post is a NaBloPoMo* prompt with the following questions, "Do you feel you have found your voice on your blog? What techniques have you tried to develop your voice in your writing? What are some characteristics of your personality in your writing?"

But before I answer that question, let me clarify one you might have (for me): What is NaBloPoMo in the first place? I didn’t know – actually forgot – what it referred to even though I've mentioned and tagged on the past few days of blogging.

NaBloPoMo is a partial acronym National Blog Posting Month. It's all about writing a blog post each day (similar to Ultra Blog Challenge and Ultimate Blog Challenge, the latter the first one I joined), this one specifically for the month of November. It also happens to be National Novel Writing Month as well; however, I believe I am not meant to be a novel writer, not yet anyway! Never say never as you never know! ;).

I began my blog based on a vision that came from God/Spirit (whatever you prefer to call it by) early in the morning a number of years ago. My first two posts in particular are specifically tailored to this: see my first, "Call to Action" http://xpressyouressence.blogspot.ca/2010/07/call-to-action.html and "Why Me? Why this Choir?" http://xpressyouressence.blogspot.ca/2010/07/why-me-why-this-choir.html in which I felt inspired to initiate an alternative choir for children/youth.

My sense was that people would want to look me up, check up on me in fact. Thus, I figured a blog post – not a website at the time as I wouldn’t know what to put on that! – would e sufficient enough.

And besides, I love to write, creative writing that is. My blog would therefore kill two birds with one stone – don’t care for that idiom too much – in fulfilling its purpose.

I was actually told by some readers earlier on or in the mid-part of my blog that they felt I did have a unique voice and actually not sure exactly what they mean by that. However, I think more importantly, it’s important that I find my voice simply by writing in whatever way and style I choose. (And my skewed photo is purposely placed sideways to give it some personality - I'm being cheeky - and besides, I'm close to the midnight deadline!)

I know I have a writing style as some of you have faithful readers may notice. It may seem or sound weird, but I love certain punctuation marks which creates a certain flavour or style if you will. Recently, I added bolding for emphasis of key words or phrases for example.

And I also love to use photos, my own or others I know preferably as going through a maze of copyrighted pictures or paying for photos do not interest me much at all. Besides, it also makes for a more personable style, don’t you think?

Other than that, I think I sometimes like to experiment and have done occasionally, though possibly rarely, more so in terms of topics.

The only that comes to mind is when I attempted writing a fiction piece to be posted on Vinodini Iyer, a blogging friend’s site at http://vinodinii.blogspot.ca/2014_08_01_archive.html

Incidentally, we became blogging friends as a result of me reading and admiring her creative and unusually twisted-at-times tales. And in turn, she became a guest blogger on my site at http://xpressyouressence.blogspot.ca/2014/09/no-i-do-not-speak-indian.html. (I highly recommend her in her writing of fictitious stories; however, she also attempted to go outside the box and write more in my style. We essentially reversed writing styles - me from nonfiction to fiction and vice versa for Vinodini.)

So essentially, I would say, I guess I do have a blogging voice if it means my own unique style.

What do you think: do you think I do? Not that it matters per se, though I’d be curious to receive your feedback on what you think it is. How would you describe it. Thanks!

(And I thought I had nothing or at least not much to say about this!)

I am linking this to NaBloPoMo, Write Tribe, and Ultra Blog Challenge.