With all the time that I've been writing, you'd think I'd know my voice. But after my stroke, I'm having to relearn everything. I had to learn how to walk, how to think, and talk and yes, even how to write. It's been brutal, but I had my loving wife to see me through it.
I learned how to write before I learned how to talk well, a conscious decision on my part that I don't regret. I speak okay now, but I still have to speak abominably slowly. The stroke seemed to affect my speech patterns the worst. So during recovery, I concentrated on writing.
Fast forward a year and a half, and I've found that I can write quite well. It wasn't so easy at first. I could write only five words a day, and not very good at that! Then I worked my way up to ten, fifteen, twenty-five, fifty, one hundred and finally, the much vaunted 250 words per day! That took me about six months to do. Somedays I wrote less, and somedays-- those were the good days-- I even wrote more.
Spring ahead another six months, and I finally worked my way up to 1200 words every day. I didn't have much else to do. so that took me eight to ten hours, but I was determined.
Now, a year and a half later, I can write an average of 1500 words per day, and I consider them pretty good, I still have to feather them, of course, but they are good enough to get by.
But still, I wonder what to write about. I've written The White Werewolf, Werewolf's Revenge and The Haunting of Hiram Abiff, but I'm anxious to move on to some real dark fiction. I've got one more werewolf novel, which is the Werewolf Awakening, and after that a good ghost story--both of which I should finish by this year, but after that---who knows what I will write?
By then, I should have my voice back.
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