Should I say 'What I wanted to say is' or 'What I wanted to say was'?

Solution 1:

I think the tenses should agree here. So you can have either:

• What I wanted to say was...
• What I want to say is...

I think generally I'd use slight re-wordings of either one:

• What I meant to say was...
• What I'm trying to say is...

Those sound most natural.

These are all pretty equivalent, conversationally. That is, when in the midst of a conversation, if you want to re-word something you just said, you can use any one and the meaning is the same. Think of it this way: you can either say, "What I meant to say just a second ago was ...", where you're re-wording what just happened, or you can say "The thought I'm trying to get across right now is...", meaning the way you expressed yourself just now was not accurately getting across your thoughts, so you're going to try to explain them again. Either way, the eventual meaning is, "I'm going to say something right now to try to better convey a thought I want to express."

If you're referring to a conversation in the past, though, and you're trying to explain that conversation, you should use the past tense versions.