Reprinted with permission from Chaos, Creativity, Completion: New Approaches to Writing and ADHD by Chloe Martinez and Lisa Van Orman Hadley, published by the University of Chicago Press. © 2026 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
For a long time, I believed that you don’t actually need to “find” your voice as a writer. Your voice is always with you and can’t be lost in the first place. This belief was shaped in part by mentors like Pat Schneider, who wrote: “You must trust your own voice. Writers often ask me, ‘How do I find my voice?’ It is a sad question—as sad as if the question were, ‘How do I find my face?’”
But what if your voice has been transmitted through various masks for decades? What if your love of language isn’t just a creative orientation to the world but also—maybe even more so—an unconscious coping mechanism?