As I have tried to focus and figure out the next words to capture, the inner voices seemed to get a little distracted or confused. Many times when I sit down to write or create, I hear other thoughts circulate with the storyline. As I reflect on the impact, I am beginning to think it may be the copious amounts of meetings I need to attend during a given day and even possibly the 20+ podcasts to which I listen.

The meetings are a given, so I will continue to separate out the content. They were there in some form when I wrote other novels and poems. So, isolating them is a natural flow for me. The podcasts were newer and even when they were there before, there were not as many. It is interesting how I have never met most of the people who I listen to daily, weekly, and randomly and still am influenced by them in my word choices, analogies, and story cadence.

I used to voice some of the words as I wrote them to make them sound more real and give the characters a personality. It seems, however, that the outside voices have moved in and are replacing some of the inner dialogue and personalities. I may be in the middle of a paragraph and out of no where, a voice from one of the podcasts I just listened to will drop by and reply the conversation they had with a co-host.

If this happened in real life, it might be annoying, but since it seems to be happening partly because I have this crazy semi-photographic memory that works when it wants to, and partly because I have grown to know these other people a little more each episode, it is really all in my head and should be under my control. It's nice to have such good friends stop by, but really, this is getting a little silly.

I used to have a longer list of podcasts, but switched back to an audio-only app to hopefully help with the growth of listens. The list grew even more. Yes, I know, it is I who has the problem…or, is it me? It doesn't really matter, but what does matter is that I need to press pause on some of the other voices for a while.

I've narrowed down the list. It is probably still too long, especially since I still have Audible books that I haven't listened to as well. However, I am hoping that I can narrow it down enough to where the other voices return…you know, the ones that do not have a mind and space of their own; the ones that I get to voice and adjust their tone; the ones that belong in the story rather than out here with the rest of us.

I think this may be a longer conversation, but I'll save it for the next inner dialogue session.