Your Unique Writing Voice

Agents complain that their slush piles contain variations of the same stories offered over and over, each by a writer without a unique writing voice. Why does this happen? And how can you prevent it from happening to you?

Your writing voice is a lot like your shadow. You don't decide to have a shadow. You just do. In the same way, you don't have to decide your writing voice. It's already part of you. Writing voice is made up of your personality, perceptions and beliefs as they inform your writing. It's also composed of vocabulary, word choice, sentence structures, grammar usage and all the other little choices you make as you write. Pinning your writing voice down can be as tough and as pointless as trying to catch your own shadow.

If it's that difficult to pin down your own writing voice, how much harder is it to imitate someone else's? And yet, that's what many writers do. We chase market trends to write things we were never called to write. We emulate other writers we admire. But, when writers imitate other writers, we fail to convince anyone of our truth. And if we live a lie long enough, we begin to forget who we were in the first place.

Peter Pan had a problem, if you'll recall. We first meet him in the Darling's nursery while he's hunting down his shadow. When we as writers don't trust our own voices, we become like Peter. We lose our shadows.

It can take some doing to find those pesky shadows again, and even then they don't reattach easily. Peter wrestled with his and needed Wendy's help to sew it back on. Sometimes it takes a little help to put things right. If you've lost your writing voice or lack the confidence to trust it, help is available in the form of writing groups, critique partners and mentors. It's worth the effort to try.

Neverland awaits.

© 2010 Janalyn Voigt

Click to Subscribe to LiveWriteBreathe by Email




|