I lost my voice.

It happened while editing others. I loved editing. Editing is all about helping your authors find the story they want to tell and helping them tell it.

The editor is a cover band. Night after night, bar after bar playing music that sounds just like a dozen bands whose music the audience came out to see. When you help an author find the right phrase or revise a chapter — you do it in his voice not your own. The audience is buying the book with his name on the cover, not yours.

Whether you’re a musician or an author, it’s great training. You learn the literature. You learn to play or write in different styles.

I stopped editing books a year and a half ago. I stopped editing websites years before that. I loved editing. Who wouldn’t like covering Zeppelin and Floyd six nights a week?

Along the way I lost my voice. I stopped sounding like me. It’s time to fix that.

The only way to recapture my voice is to start writing again. I need to write every day so that my voice knows where to find me.

I’m sure it will. It always has.