Cheated...

...by that cruel enemy, Laryngitis.  It tricked me, returning my voice on Sunday, only to tear it away again with sharp, biting blades after two hours and twenty minutes at work on Monday, amongst dry air-conditioning and unavoidable communication with customers and colleagues. 

My reclaimed voice is gone.

My doctor has exiled me to Silence, signing me off work for a week to rest my voice - at this rate, I'll be hibernating for winter!  So, ill, frustrated, bored and a little lonely, I am determined to channel the not-speaking-Me into the writing-Me, and develop a Voice that will be heard when it is read, if not yet spoken.

In this week off, I aim to write.  This evening, I am going to spend a (timed) hour writing the short story I've been faf-tivating* with since March this year.

* Faf-tivating = a combination of faffing and titivating with a piece of writing, where ideas, thoughts and brief notes are made, altered and re-conceived...but no actual writing happens.  An affliction which ails all writers from time to time, faf-tivating can only be cured by GETTING ON WITH IT.

So, an hour into my short story will hopefully result in me not wanting to stop writing it, and will lead into the next hour and the next...you get the picture - so keep your fingers crossed!

A result that I have already achieved this week is to have wrangled the Pesky Poem into an acceptable form, with insightful and (thankfully!) favourable comments from Zoe (thanks, as always, hon).  It needs just a few tweaks more...and then I'll be onto the next poem in the sequence, which I will begin before my sick-week is over...

So, Voice, you rascal, you may not be able to speak but you will write!

"...the more individual the personality, the more specific the voice." ~ James McCreet,

'Writing Magazine' April 2011