![]() The market is sadly becoming like those "cookie cutter" houses that are seen in many towns. I personally think that every writer in the world needs some good dose of looking in the mirror finding who they are before writing. This particular skill does not belong to me, it isn’t part of my voice. I thought I had to meander, that I was supposed to adhere to someone else’s writing formula. I am positive it’s made me a better writer, because now I’m not afraid of moving from action to action. The best thing about identifying this mistake is that I can now beware of it. For some reason this seems to be my thing a mistake I am destined to repeat. But no, I had to write two pages of walking, eating, making camp and internal observation. ”Two days passed” or “After two full days of walking” or something along these lines. Instead of writing about a guy having an event-free walk from one town to another, I should have leaped to the action. I got so caught up trying to show the passing of time that I forgot that sometimes it’s okay to tell. Once, in trying to demonstrate the passing of time, I wrote two pages that I ended up tossing because it was irrelevant and didn’t move the action forward. ![]() It used to be entire pages or paragraphs, now it’s mostly a sentence. I have a bad habit of drawing attention away from the action with wonderful (or highly detailed) descriptions of something irrelevant. Today I want YOU to tell me: What are some ways to find your unique writer’s voice? Don’t you think that will be a terrific topic for another post? Me too. How, exactly do you do that? Take heart-there are lots of ways to excavate, uncover, discover and develop your writer’s voice (and it doesn’t necessarily involve years of therapy). It’s like going to psychotherapy, delving deep and allowing the real you to emerge, only in this case you want it to find its way on to the page. It’s a process of peeling away the layers of your false self, your trying-to-be-something-you’re-not self, your copycat self, your trying-to-sound-a-certain-way self, your spent-my-life-watching-television self. (Yikes, sounds like I’m going New Age here!) And the only place to find it is within you. So how do you find your voice? You can’t learn it. Admittedly, it’s a big hurdle for all of us to overcome. This means you are not being your unique self, but a composite of many other selves who are not you. Instead of truly creating stories and characters of your own, you may be unwittingly regurgitating stories and characters you’ve read and seen in thousands of hours of reading and TV/movie watching in your life. similar to other works of fiction rather than striking me as fresh and coming from life. When I read fiction that doesn’t have a “voice” that captures me, it usually feels derivative, i.e. I also think one of our biggest problems is that we’ve been media consumers since the day we were born. Many of us are afraid of real, total, gut wrenching honesty. We expend lots of energy upholding our facades, and in the process, we can lose touch with our true, unique selves. ![]() We show the world what we want them to see. I think it’s because most of us spend our lives presenting to the world anything and everything except who we really are. How, then, are you failing to express that on the page? ![]() Sounds simple, right? Then why is voice so hard? One of the most common problems with fiction by new authors is the lack of a unique voice on the page. Voice is all about your originality and having the courage to express it. It’s the unfettered, non-derivative, unique conglomeration of your thoughts, feelings, passions, dreams, beliefs, fears and attitudes, coming through in every word you write. So what is it? To me, your writer’s voice is the expression of YOU on the page. It’s not a decision to write in first or third person. Let’s start by identifying a few things voice isn’t. What do we mean when we say we’re looking for “new voices”? What do editors mean when they say it’s the writer’s voice that captures them-or doesn’t? ![]() I’ll barely be able to scratch the surface because it’s a big topic, but let’s get started. Several people have asked me about “voice” lately. ![]()
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