As writers, we hear a whole lot of talk about this “voice” thing. What is voice? How do you find it? When do you know you’ve found it?
Well, unfortunately, I can’t tell you exactly what it is. What it’s not, though, is somewhat easier to identify:
What voice is not:
1. The imitation of another writer.
2. Contrived.
3. Difficult.
Sometimes, when we’re wading through a story we’re trying to tell, and we feel like it’s maybe the hardest story we’ve ever told before, it could be that we’re fighting against our own natural voice. I used to want to write these posts on this writing blog in a really intellectual way, like I was a professor imparting wisdom to all her students. But my voice is a more laid-back one. I like to crack open my life and share examples from that, not from all the literary voices who are out there—because I can only speculate about what was learned and gleaned by them, but when it comes to my own life, I know exactly what was learned and gleaned.
I also used to fight against my natural poetic bend, because a creative writing professor in college had called me “melodramatic.” But I know now that he wasn’t correct. Maybe, at 19, my poetic bend wasn’t quite as polished as it is now, but I’ve always been poetic. Even when I was little, I would speak in poetic sentences. When I was only 9, I discovered my mom’s 1,000-page anthology of Emily Dickinson poetry—and fell in love with it—and was sold on the— absolute beauty of poetry.
(The dashes—in case you didn’t know—is a trademark of Dickinson’s poetry. This is my voice—and yet it’s not—because I’m using dashes—where I normally wouldn’t.)
So while I can’t tell you exactly what your voice sounds like, I can tell you some of the practices that might uncover your own unique way of writing. They’re really pretty simple.
1. You have to practice.
This is probably the best thing you can do for your voice. No one is going to find your voice except for you. If you’re practicing day after day after day, you’re going to find it, even if you aren’t really looking. Actually, you’ll probably find it sooner if you’re not looking, because if you’re looking and you’re thinking about it as you’re writing, then your voice will probably go into hiding, because all those internal editors will come out and start saying you need to make this sound a little more like Hemingway or Faulkner or maybe Jacqueline Woodson here and Rainbow Rowell there.
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2. It’s okay to emulate.
For a time. That means it’s worthwhile to study some other authors and try to get a feel for their voice. Something I like to do every now and then is read a passage of text I have in a document and try to guess who wrote it. Some of the old classic writers have quite amazing voices. Faulkner is one of my favorites. He wrote differently in all of his novels, but one of my favorites is As I Lay Dying. Each character in it has his own voice (which should happen in fiction, by the way—there’s your voice, but there’s also your character’s voice. They should be two different things. But before you can write the voice of a character, you have to be familiar with your own.).
Test yourself. Study the masters. But don’t try to emulate them for long, because it’s disingenuous to your own voice—and the world needs your unique way of telling stories.
3. Keep a journal.
The best thing I ever did for finding my voice was taking out a physical journal and writing by hand every evening. I did it every evening for a year, and those writings became a book, but they also became a better grasp on what my real voice sounded like. So much of our writing today is done on computers, but writing by hand is a great way to slow your hand down enough to listen to the voice that’s speaking inside your mind, which is the voice that holds the essence of your true voice.
4. Remember that your voice will be unique.
Comparisons are out. Don’t sound like Wilkie Collins? That’s alright. You’re not Wilkie Collins. Don’t sound like Salman Rushdie? Perfectly fine. You’re not him, either. You’re you, and you have to be okay with not sounding like anyone else.
I’ll be honest. This isn’t always easy. There have been a number of times I have read an essay that some other blogger has written (or a song or a book), and I’ll think, Man, I wish I could have said it exactly like that. The most recent example of this was a Kelly Clarkson song called “Piece By Piece” that felt like it was written about my life. Right after I heard it, I sat down to try writing a song that said the same thing in the same powerful way. I gave up after a few hours, because I have my style and she has hers. I have my voice, and she has hers.
At the end of the day, the only thing that will help us along the way to discovering our voice is to practice—and to quit comparing, to quit trying to be like all the other people. We have a unique talent, and we have a unique way of telling stories.
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We just have to uncover it.
