Greetings,
The Heartening Voice is the book I consider my best. I don't know why. It just is. And there is something of an interesting story behind the process of how I came to write it.
At the time, I was doing a lot of writing, trying to compile things for a new book. But I kept hearing a voice in my head. I certainly recognized it, but it was not one that was not my own. It's never a good idea for me to have that happen, because, when I write new things, I like to hear them in my own voice. I even read them aloud to hear how they sound. And I don't particularly like my voice, so if something I've written sounds good, even as I'm reading it, I figure it must be good.
But this other voice I was hearing could have thrown things off, as this person has some vocal chords that could make the worst bit of writing sound like it's the song of an angel. Therefore, how could I judge on the quality if everything automatically seemed amazing? So, I tried very hard to clear my head of anything but my own words and sounds. But then, I hit a wall.
After I silenced that voice, I found it very hard to continue writing. It was then that I realized that it was that voice which was inspiring me to write in the first place. So I chose to embrace it. Once that happened, the writing started to flow again and I started coming up with some of the best stuff I ever had.
Again, I cover a wide range of topics. I wrote about some people I admire, about some movies that I love and about some personal experiences I was dealing with at the time. I pulled inspiration from everywhere to write the poems for this book. There was one called "Street", which was my take on a movie called Once. "How Much Love" was inspired by my favorite Shakespeare quote. I had the Chelsea on my mind when I wrote "Hotel" because I was thinking about who I would want to stay as a guest if I had a hotel like of my own. Lots of fellow artists is the answer to that by the way. And the one I would call the best in here, "Sea Calling" was indirectly inspired by Sting, as I had recently heard the music from The Last Ship. So, I had was thinking a lot about ships and the sea, which morphed, slowly but surely, into the fairy tale sounding poem that I came up.
As usual, I just let everything around me inspire me. Including that beautiful voice, whose owner I may never reveal. A lot of what's in this book is much more personal than in the previous ones and it felt good to be able to do that and share myself more openly with my readers.
So, that is my summary of my best book, in my opinion, The Heartening Voice. Enjoy.
Love and full moons,
Becky the Writer
