Aiming for the head - and heart.

For the longest time, I have had this struggle about writing for a newspaper.

I had it when I was an editorial writer. I had it when I wrote a four-times-a-week column for our local newspapers. I have it as a columnist writing for a national audience.

I don't fit into the box - or what I perceive is a box.

I want to write in my own style, in my own voice, which is very simple and very personal and ever-changing. Sometimes, I tell a story. Sometimes, I write a letter. Sometimes, I have other voices in the column. Sometimes I write like other columnists. Sometimes I don't.

As an editorial writer, I was most proud of the project called Taxpayers Held Hostage. For 43 days we wrote editorials - funny, straightforward, in various formats, about the ills of New York state government. The readers loved it. The response was incredible.

It was different. As a writer who is a columnist, I want the flexibility to be different, to not view the world through a Washington prism, to talk about all kinds of issues, in all kinds of ways. That is why I am involved in writing and speaking projects that redefine traditional commentary.

I want to use all of who I am (Christian, African-American, woman, aunt, playwright, Middle American, Sunday school teacher, baby boomer, caregiver) to bring perspectives, insights, and opinions that may not be heard or not heard often enough.

Most of all I want to have gut-level, real discussions with people. I am tired of tiptoeing around issues like race - whether the tiptoeing occurs inside or outside newsrooms.

But I believe that for columnists like me to survive and thrive in newspapers, editors must let us out of the box, let us move beyond the confines of traditional column writing and aim straight for the head and heart of the reader.