FINDING YOUR VOICE.

Writers often search and struggle for many years to find a voice. This can be an elusive and discouraging process. But I think what gets overlooked in pursuit of "a voice" is what a voice is actually made of.A voice isn't just you in text form. A voice is a combination of experience and education, which is an important point. Writers spend a lot of time searching to hear themselves in their writing, when it is really something that is constructed––birthed even––not found. Finding your voice isn't a thing. Through observation, education and hard work one's voice is made.It starts with borrowing. As a young writer you inhabit Hemingway. You become Fitzgerald. Ditto Faulkner, Twain, Thompson, Saramago.You have your Kerouac stage––we all do. And that's okay. It is part of the pursuit. You take from them what you need to express yourself and leave the rest for others.All the while, you write. You determine what works and does not work for what you're hoping to say. Consciously or unconsciously, you take what you've borrowed from other writers and watch it become you.And you read. A lot. You study the immaculate sentence structure of Don DeLillo and Barbara Kingsolver. You admire Franzen's ability to create humans you feel like you know (and often loathe). Feast on Wendell Berry. Digest with Pollan. And you read your own work aloud to hear what it may sound like in the head of another reader.Then finally, your writing will relax because you accept that you will never find your voice, because your voice isn't hiding. It's living––you've had it all along. It, like soil, just needs your attention to be productive. You will see it, and feed it, and it will grow, but you will never possess it any more than you will possess a garden. It's too alive, too complex, too competitive. Instead, you participate in its creation, cultivate it and hope it does well for you. Work on it, enjoy the process, and it will reward you.Then later, you will begin to farm. And you will translate what you've learned about finding your voice to farming. You will borrow from other farmers––Elliot Coleman and Jean-Martin Fortier, Gene Logsdon, Joel Salatin, Masanobu Fukuoka, Egyptians, Mayans, Incas, Italians, French, Native Americans, Permies, Natural wine makers, and Bugtussle Farm. What applies to you will stick. What doesn't, and doesn't work for your farm, will be left behind. You will read––a lot––and you will work. One day, you will find your farming voice and you will chase it wherever it takes you. That could be permaculture. That could be grain farming. That could part of each or none of either. Because your voice is a living thing. And once it's born, it never stops moving––never, that is, if you don't.-Jesse.