I Spent College Pretending I Hadn't Read The Alchemist. But That Book Taught Me Everything About Finding My Voice.

I spent most of college pretending I hadn't read The Alchemist.

I was surrounded by engineers — sharp, serious people who, if they read at all, read the heavy stuff. The stuff you don't feel embarrassed to say out loud. Dostoevsky. Camus. Moliére.

You know, the fartsy fancy stuff of high literary circles.

The kind of books you could leave spine-out on a desk, and people would think you were smarter than you were. Sometimes I read those.

But most of the time, I loved reading the "garbage," too — Coelho, spy novels, and other popular culture titles —and I wasn't telling anyone.

If you've read The Alchemist, you know that the story arc is one we are now familiar with across other stories.

A boy leaves everything he knows to chase a treasure across the world, survives the desert, survives villains, survives tragedy and obstacles, and finds out at the end that the treasure was buried back in his own backyard.

Right there. The whole time.

I loved that book.

I was also embarrassed that I loved it.

I didn't realize until years later that I was doing the same thing with my writing.

We sit down to tell a story and immediately start performing. We reach for language that sounds more serious, more literary, more like the writers we admire and less like the person who actually lived through the thing we're writing about.

We think the story needs a certain air, a certain architecture, a certain distance from who we actually are. We dress it up. We make it presentable. We make it not ours.

Comedians face a similar problem. Jerry Seinfeld talks about this. Garry Shandling talks about it. Every comedian who has figured out how to be genuinely funny says the same thing: the goal isn't to become funnier.

The goal is to become more of who you are. The comedy was already there. You were just covering it up with the version of yourself you thought the room wanted.

Writing is the same.

The voice you're looking for isn't somewhere out there in the books you haven't read yet or the workshops you haven't taken.

It's already in you.

It's in the way you tell a story at dinner. It's in the text you sent last week that made someone laugh out loud. It's in the specific, slightly unhinged way your brain makes connections that nobody else would make.

The treasure is in you.

The work is to stop burying it.

When your writing sounds like someone else, everything gets harder.

The way out is simpler than it sounds. Write more. Then edit with one filter: does it sound like me? Not does it sound smart, not does it sound publishable, not does it sound like the writer you wish you were. Does it sound like you? That's the whole edit.

Next time you sit down with the Storytelling Frame, try this: write the draft the way you would tell it to someone you actually trust. Use your words. Use your rhythm. Let it be a little weird if that's where it goes. The structure will hold the story. Your voice is what makes it worth reading.

I don't hide my voice anymore.

Not in my writing. Not in what I read. Not in the books I leave out on my nightstand. Montaigne sits on top of Grant Faulkner, on top of some paperback I can't remember the name of, and on top of Bill Maher's You Won't Believe What This Comedian Said.

Happy telling!

-Carlos

P.S. I just updated my Story Frame cheat sheet — the full structure, the drafting sequence, and a prompt you can paste directly into any writing session. Reply letting me know you want a copy, and I'll send it to you.