Prospecting for Gold

I once went prospecting for gold in the Australian outback. It was THE most exciting thing. My companion was a real life, professional prospector called Cranston Edwards and armed with a state of the art metal detector, he showed me how to read the geology of the landscape,  to interpret the signals the detector gave off and how to identify false alarms with the magnetised end of a pickaxe. We made our survey in one direction and where the bleeper lost its head completely, we drew a line in the dirt.  We then swept back and forth along our mark and when the bleeper sounded off again, we drew another line and at the junction of the two (X really does mark the spot) we started to dig, until Cranston unearthed a nugget of the palest gold.

It's a similar process for writers finding their voice.  It's not a random process; you need to be methodical and wide ranging.  You set off in one direction, writing about this and that, until you find a subject that resonates with you.  Then you start to tackle this subject from a number of different angles, developing the plot, working up the characters, drafting away and then re-drafting, experimenting with different styles until the tone of your work, its musical note, stops sounding muffled and flat and rings true -- maybe only for a single moment, in one sentence, but it is here that you start to dig.  It becomes the focus for all your excavations.  You find different strata and uncover many  layers and it is a delicate and labourious process. As with proper prospecting, the secret lies in listening diligently to begin with, in remaining alert to possibilities, and being sensitive to the material you are working with.

However, if you are painstaking and keep sifting through the dirt, like Cranston, you'll find one nugget, and then maybe another, and another. It's not bullion -- it doesn't come all at once in a solid and reassuring block, but a little bit at a time, glimmering here, glittering there, but that way the search is more exciting and rewarding.