How do you prevent yourself from singing too high??

I wish I could put an octave cap on my voice. I sound much better singing in my natural speaking voice range (a little higher though), but for some reason my voice always gravitates to the upper register. Not out of tune or anything I just don't like how my voice sounds there, and it is borderline grating.

This is sort of along the lines of my previous thread about it being hard to find the proper vocal approach when performing a newly written song.

I suffer from the same thing. My voice has a much nicer tone down low and at a comfortable pitch. But up high it feels more emotive to me and I just wanna go up there.

I really think it's developing better writing habits.

Something I've done before is written a song in E. Then transposed a recording to F# or G. I then write the vox to that... and hopefully when I bring it back down, my voice is hovering around a more comfortable pitch...

Again, if you know the key your song is in then you say "let's not go too much past this G" in Emin, for example, then it would be mission accomplished.

true. But when writing vox I like not to think and get enrolled in the song. I let go and just sing what sounds (hopefully) great. Meh. It's just experience vs vocal familiarity.

The problem is that what you hear in your head as sounding great, you might not be able to reproduce on stage, with the band. I do that all the time -that's why I'm a better writer than vocal performer LOL. It does have to do with experience and experimenting with delivery, see what you can sell and weed out what you can't.

You hear a lot of people who sing in a much higher tone than they talk in. It might just feel a bit more natural and healthier to you singing higher. I can go either way on this, but I sometimes also drift really high. Sometimes when you are writing a melody it is easier to match pitch in the higher range rather than lower, so you will move up there more comfortably, whereas lowering the vocals can get you lost sometimes.