When you’re talking to your clients, your friends, or your family, you have no trouble, right? You just talk. You talk about your expertise, you talk about your questions, you talk about your fears.
But when the time comes to write, do you clam up because you don’t know how to “find your voice?”
Here’s the secret: you already have your voice.
Writers talk about “finding their voice” like it’s a precious gem that must be mined, or like it’s a secret that you must reach a certain level to unlock. But it’s not.
A long time ago (okay, not that long ago), writers were concerned with “finding their voice” because there was an expected standard that their voice needed to meet. There was one acceptable way of talking and writing. Now, though, we operate in a world where there is a place for many voices of many styles.
What is a Writer’s Voice?
When we talk about a writer’s “voice,” we’re talking about their tone, sentence structure, and diction, or word choice.
Does the writer use a formal tone, or a more casual tone?
Does the writer write in short sentences and even make use of stylistic fragments, or do they write in long, complicated sentences?
Do they use slang and colloquialisms in their work, or do they stick to formal, “professional” language?
All of these choices build a writer’s “voice.”
As a writer, your voice contributes to your reader’s experience. It helps them relate to you and makes them want to keep reading.
Your voice is not simply another name for your writing style. Your writing style encompasses your goal as a writer: to explain, to persuade, to narrate, or to describe. Your voice can shine through across many different styles.
Ok, How Do I Find Mine, Again?
It’s not lost! You don’t have to look for it under the couch cushions like coins for the washing machine. While some in academia want you to believe that your voice is difficult to develop and hard to find, that’s simply not true.
You already have your voice. It’s the voice you use every day.
You’re already an expert. You have something to say. And you know how to communicate it. That’s it. That’s your voice.
Even though you don’t need to find your voice, you may want to spend some time and effort developing your voice so you’re more comfortable using it in written text. After all, most of us spend more time communicating orally than we do through writing, so it’s easy to be scared by the blinking cursor on the screen. Here are some important reminders for developing your voice:
- Don’t Stress About Sounding Smart. When people shift from oral to written communication, they often try to elevate their language and their syntax to sound smarter. They use fancy words that they’d never use in everyday conversation, and as a result, their writing can sound stilted and over-complicated. What use are multi-syllabic words if they just make your message more confusing? Your information is what’s important, not your ability to spell “sesquipedalian.”
- Don’t Stress About Grammar. You’re not in high school anymore! You won’t get a bad grade on your book if your grammar isn’t perfect. In real life, authors use run-on sentences and fragments on purpose in order to better communicate their thoughts and goals. Stop thinking about grammar as the language jail cell you can’t escape from and start thinking about it as a rule that’s fun to break on purpose from time to time. Yes, you want your book to be professional, so you want to follow some rules of grammar. That’s why writers often have editors for their work; the editors fix glaring grammar problems while keeping the author’s voice intact.
- Don’t Be a Copycat. We’ve all heard that imitation is the best form of flattery. But if you’re trying to copy another writer’s voice, your own work won’t feel sincere and real. You want your readers to know you, not the you who’s trying to write like another writer you think is good.
- Go Forth and Write Badly. Don’t over-edit yourself in your first draft. In fact, don’t edit yourself at all. Let yourself write your first draft without overthinking it. Just get all of your thoughts on paper, and then go back and edit. Your first draft won’t be good. It won’t be pretty, and no one expects it to be. If you overthink your first draft, though, you’ll miss key messages you could have shared because you’ll be too worried about how you sound. Imagine that you’re helping your best friend through the same problem you’re solving with your book, and let your words flow from there. Let your rough draft be rough.
- Record Your (Speaking) Voice. Even if you’re an expert writer, you can’t type as fast as you can talk. When you get into a flow, you may need to put down the keyboard and pick up the voice recorder. Most smartphones include a voice recording app. Make use of these apps to get your thoughts out and keep your flow from being interrupted. Then, you can send your recording to a transcription service (or transcribe it yourself to turn Vocal Draft 1 into Written Draft 2), and voila! You’ve got yourself a draft!