Ugh. The first version of that last post was just plain stiff. Completely unoriginal. Totally trite. I tried revising it, and it sounds a little better now, but really?! How forced can I sound?
This got me thinking about voice and flow and how I can write in a way that feels and sounds good—all the time. Do I need to take the time to write and then revise even my blog posts? Why can’t golden nuggets of beauty just drip from my fingertips every time I sit down to type?
Okay, enough whining.
Voice is incredibly important to any developing writer. Anyone can write a book or a short story or life experience, but the only way to distinguish what you wrote from what the rest of the masses have written is to bring yourself into the piece—your thoughts, desires, fears, hopes, unique viewpoint.
Yikes.
When I Googled “voice in writing,” I found Holly Lisle’s article, Ten Steps to Finding Your Writing Voice. She sums up exactly what I’m thinking, hoping and fearing about finding voice. (On a side note, the rest of her website seems pretty interesting, and I look forward to sifting through it soon.) Go check it out.
In the meantime, I will keep practicing and thinking and writing, and hopefully, that will eventually lead to a voice that sounds like, well, me!
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