Writers and Voice

The other day as Ken drove us home from vacation, I was reading an article about writing. I couldn't tell you much about the content except for one small bit that stood out like a star-filled night. The topic was using cliches in writing. The author of the article said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that 'If you use a lot of cliches when you write, you'll never find your own voice.' 

This eye-opening observation made me sit back and reflect a moment, then read it again. I wish I could reference the article, but it popped up on my phone and I passed on by when finished. Even so, I thought about that statement as we rolled by newly planted fields and small towns. 

Writers who overuse cliches (there is room for them in writing if only done very occasionally) are relying on the words of others instead of forming their own words which transform into their writing voice. Every writer needs to find his/her voice. It's not there when you first put words on paper or screen. It's something that a writer develops as she/he moves down the path in their writing journey. 

Susanna Kearsley, a best-selling Canadian historical fiction author, expands on the acquisition of voice in today's quote. She tells us, and rightly so, that we don't want to imitate others. While we all have writers whom we admire, we don't want to sound like them. We must sound like ourself in order to develop our writing voice, something distinctly us.

Ms. Kearsley also mentions that there is no need to attempt perfect sentences. If that is not how you talk, maybe you shouldn't write that way. It's possible that your writing would then come out far too formal, maybe even stilted. I'm not saying to write crummy, ungrammatical sentences. Not at all. Instead, I take her point that I (and you) should write sentences that sound like us, that use our own voice. 

One way to know what your writing voice is would be to equate voice to style. It's the way you write. Each writer should have his/her own voice, something unique to them 

Ms. Kearsley's first point in the poster quote is worth a second look. She advises that we learn to tell a story on paper the same way we might tell it out loud to a friend, perhaps over a cup of coffee. Take a moment to consider how you tell your best friend what happened to you in a terrible storm. Would you write about it in the same way, using the same phrases? Or would you think you needed to make it more formal since you're writing for others to read? If you do, it's possible you could lose something in the translation. 

Give some thought to your own writing voice today. Have you discovered it yet? Still working on it? Or have it working great for you?