Writing in the Active Voice

First, a word from our sponsor. I recently attended the 2012 North Carolina Writers’ Network Squire Writing Residency at Queens University in Charlotte. Pat MacEnulty, Creative Nonfiction instructor, gave our group a prompt: Writing is…..Ten minutes later we shared our thoughts about writing. To my surprise, I discovered I’d written something between a manifesto and a purpose statement. Now, I share it with you:

Writing is the organization and illumination of human experience. Writing is reaching across the abyss of aloneness to others. It is a temporary restraining order against death. When it’s going well it’s a rush few activities can match. It is an act of discovery, archeology, and creation. In the beginning was the word. “Logos” means more than “word” in Attic Greek. It means an organizing principle.

I read as a writer and write as a reader. If either activity leaves me unchanged, then the text or I, or both, have failed. As a reader, I want to experience three things:

•  Resonance
• Revelation
• Aesthetic pleasure

      As a writer I want to inspire the same three things. 

,    To write in the active voice is to make something happen. It is about taking responsibility. It is not to say, as a former President did, "Mistakes were made"  which is passive, but to say, "Jane started a blog, Writing in the Active Voice, because writing makes things happen.