How Do You Find Your Voice?
And what is "voice" anyway?
I wanted to be a writer badly. When I was young I read everything I could find about becoming one.
Every how-to on writing told me I needed to "find my voice."
That advice kept me lost for a long time, looking for something but not knowing what I searched for. Finally I figured it out.
"Voice" in writing is not something that can be found; it can only be earned. That is a heretical statement, so please note it and note where you read it—you heard it from me.
Voice is facility with language. Period. Voice is getting comfortable enough with language—in our case this crippled, crazily structured, often inadequate, and sometime soaring set of hieroglyphics that we call “English”—that who you are and what you believe and what you know comes soaring through. Your writing has your stamp on it.
A voice is not a style. Voice is the ability to write complex and interesting sentences using a variance of structures. Voice is the innate ability to be logical in one’s writing. Again, voice is comfort with the language in which you’re writing.
A voice is not given and yet voice is not elusive. I say again, Voice is earned. Voice comes to the hard worker, just as luck comes to the brave. Facility is earned through practice, meaning reading and writing and editing.
To find your voice, then, read and write and edit.
When I am asked to judge a contest, I often start by reading the first line of every entry. Then I go back and read each first paragraph. Then I'll read the entries. Nine times out of ten, I know from the first line who is going to win the contest. That's because voice will shine through right away, evident in the ease and facility and beauty of even the first sentence.
That’s not always the case. But it’s often the case.
(At the moment I am judging the entries in Ninth Letter’s 2023 creative nonfiction contest. I just got sent essays from a bunch of great writers. This one is going to be difficult.)
Once when I was teaching at a university in my region, I met a young writer from my hometown. That thrilled me immensely—my little hometown had produced another writer! His stories were crazily good, throbbing with energy, but something was off. I wrote a note to him:
I think what you need is lots of experience writing. I don’t think your voice is developed yet. Having a voice means simply having a familiarity with words, so that you say what needs to be said without effort. Voice is practice. I’d like to have a conversation with you about how much time you actually spend writing—not simply writing for practice, in journals, but writing for others to read. My honest feeling, my friend, is that you haven’t even begun to touch the depths of your creativity and ability.
My message to you, then: To find your voice, do a lot more writing, a lot more tinkering, a lot more reading. Write until sentences come easy.
Photo of osprey nest with fledgling was shot by Silas Ray-Burns at George L. Smith State Park. Follow Silas
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I invite you to write with me on Wednesdays at 11:30 am. I chose noon in case the lunch hour is the only time you can find during the day to practice your art and craft. It’s silent co-writing time Live via Zoom—simply a Zoom room where we can be together virtually, joining across all our writing spaces. The Zoom link stays the same week to week. I’ll send it out again on Tuesday, or you may have it from last week.
After last week’s session, I got this exuberant email:
I’m teaching a 1.0-level course of Magical Craft of Creative Nonfiction in late summer, Wednesday evenings 7-9 pm Live on Zoom. It starts July 26 and runs for 6 weeks. Be thinking if this is something you’d like to do, and I’ll have a registration link to you soon. This is a class for people who are drawn to writing and want to know more about what it entails before jumping in fully or committing fully. We work with a handful of very useful and creative forms: a scene-driven essay, the flash essay, the micro-memoir, and prose poetry. Be in touch if you want to know more, or watch this space. I’ll advertise the course soon.
Coming up in the fall, starting Oct. 9 & convening on Monday evenings, American Nature Writing Masterclass. I’m finally doing it—focusing only on nature, environmental, and place-based writing for an entire semester. If you want to be on the waiting list to hear more about that, hit me up.
Yesterday I was in Savannah to speak at a day-conference on place sponsored by Ossabaw Island Foundation and The Learning Center. I had an entire roomful of people—almost 100 of us—writing poems to the Golden Isles of Georgia. That was gigantic. Here are two happy participants whose book club read Wild Spectacle. We’re holding books to show that…
We. Still. Read.
My observation about ‘voice’ is that there’s a part (when I’m touched by something I’m reading) related to how the writer thinks, that comes through in their work. Joan Didion and Jelani Cobb come to mind-- I have diagrammed their work to try and understand exactly how they ‘did that.’ I aspire to getting my brain to work like that, for the pleasure of expressing myself differently! Thanks for this forum 🥰
I remember my Comp 101 class in the late 60s and an assignment to describe my room-- my first stab at assembling words to convey an image. In the 70s my first job out of college: writing training manuals. As an Org Development Consultant in the 80s I supported client departments at a NYC bank requiring carefully written communications to sr mgmt. I left for maternity leave, and didn’t return. I knew someone at a trade journal and caught some assignments interviewing financial types, summarized in submissions of 1K-1.5K words edited and on deadline.
When my youngest went to college I went to graduate school, finishing a trajectory in healing arts that started when my kids were little. I was the oldest person in my graduating class; new-to-me technology presented a challenge that was equal to the program’s content. Really, my writing skills saved me, now applied to written patient assessments and treatment plans. Outside of work, my writing projects are practical: a couple of yoga videos, the story of my parent’s WWII romance based on their letters, the story of my Indiana pioneer 3x great grandmother based on a birthday diary she kept... interesting if you’re a family member or take my yoga class. For people who know me or work with me I’m known for having a particular voice-- that you describe-- applied in the above arenas. All the elements are there.
I’m challenging myself to express it differently; I have LOTS of words. My goal, always: find the fewest needed to convey what I want to say (shortest distance between two points etc). the concept of writing in a manner labeled ‘creative nonfiction’ is a revelation. I’ve read many pieces written in this form without recognizing that it was/is an actual form.