Well, here is February. Like many people in my local area, I’m a bit cabin-feverish. I’ve managed to dig out my driveway, cutting a path through the snow drifts, but the roads are scary,  reduced to 1 1/2 lanes at unexpected, brake-hitting moments. I find myself only going out when absolutely necessary.

I have had more than usual amount of time to think – and read – and write.

I recently read Stephen King’s newly updated Salem’s Lot.

I can’t lie; I love his prose, especially his early novels. Every time I hear the phrase “turtles all the way down” I think fondly of It. (And how as kids who read the book we’d have fun with the pronoun.)

Anyway, in the foreword to Salem’s Lot, King compares creating a novel to breathing and outlining to artificial respiration. And, I thought, ouch! That was really funny – and cutting. Perhaps there is something to that, not the outlining part which is personal, but having the courage to speak in a cutting – and funny – way. Some might say – well, he can say that because he’s *Stephen King* but I wonder sometimes if in part he’s *Stephen King* because he is willing to say things like that.

I need to find my voice. I was reminded of a song I wrote when I was young and naive, and wrote songs intended to encourage. One of the lines went “Find your will, find your spirit, find your voice.” The words haunt me, like a ghost of something I once knew. Writing, to me, is in part this bug, this childhood fantasy I can’t quite let go of or forget.

What about you? How do you find your voice? How do you create? What do you most respect in other writers? Has a writer ever spoken especially to you?