Question: I will preface my question by stating I am very new to writing and new to this website. I am here for help.

I'm writing a collection of inspirational short stories, as though I was sitting across from someone over coffee sharing my experiences. Because my normal manner of speaking is in passive voice, I am struggling desperately to convert over to active voice, which is basically stifling the flow of my thoughts and words, making them almost stiff and impersonal. 

I have been studying the grammar rules and know exactly what needs to be done, but I am stuck - what is the best advice you can offer for someone in my situation? I am not ashamed or embarrassed to ask this but would appreciate your input. Thank you.

Answer: 
Well, for starters, a mix of active and passive voice gives your writing variation. It's the same with how you would want to vary sentence length and structure. 

The difference between active voice and passive voice is where you put your focus. 

The dog bit the man. (Active)
The man was bitten by the dog. (Passive) 

If your default is passive voice, I think a good place to start is trying to recognize when you are using PV and when you are using AV. In my experience, PV is usually recognizable by the preposition "by." I think [this](https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/CCS_activevoice.html) is a good resource on AV/PV, and has some good examples on when PV is actually good to use. Hope it helps!
I struggle with this too, so while I can't completely act like I know what I'm doing, I would like to recommend this app:

<http://www.hemingwayapp.com/>

It's a neat little app that will at the very least flag up all the little ways you're using passive voice so you know where you're tripping up. It's useful for minimalist prose in general, but don't take its word as gospel; after all, if everyone was hyper-minimalist, there'd be no stylistic variation.

Note: I'm not sponsored by Hemingwayapp.