If you’re a writer, developing your voice is an important part of your craft. It’s a process. It takes time to cultivate it, and the only way you do is through writing. The more you write, the more your voice emerges.
The general writing advice around voice includes:
- How to find your voice
- How to use your voice
- Be clear in your writing
- Infuse your writing with your personality
- You should sound like you
It seems obvious: our voices should be clear, strong. We don’t want to sound weak or boring. Every word we choose, the way we construct our sentences, the cadence, the rhythm—it all counts, whether it’s on the page or the words are spilling out of our mouths.
There’s so much to be said about how important it is to speak up and use your voice. You have something to say, don’t you? Don’t I?
Or, maybe, that’s the thing. We have to figure out what we want to say, then how we want to say it. Maybe that’s not as simple as it sounds.
For me, there’s a huge difference between writing something instructional and pragmatic and digging down deeper into something universal and true. I can write an expository essay, explaining how to do something or discussing something tangible, and the writing comes easily. The stakes are low. I’m not on the hook.
Matters of the heart, however, are a whole other ball of wax.
When I want to say something from my heart, I have to start by listening. I ask my heart what it has to say, and then I listen. I wait. I let my mind wander until I hear something inside myself, clear as a bell. It’s a place away from all the noise and advice, the whistles and pings that beckon for our attention.
It’s about quieting all the noise around me so I can hear the voice inside. From there, I write. But first, I have to slow down.
First, I have to listen.
The risk of using your voice
If we’re truly using our voices, if we’re really speaking from our hearts, there’s always a risk. Whether that’s written on the page or spoken out loud is no matter.
If we have something to say, something worthwhile, we are being vulnerable.
When I think about voice, that’s what I think about. Not only is important to be articulate and to use your voice in a way that feels like you, but you have to have something to say. We all have a particular way of looking at the world, and that’s worth sharing.
One piece of writing advice that I love is that the more specific something is, the more universal it is. Our life experience and our stories may be different, but what we feel deep down is the same. We tell stories and talk about our lives to connect with each other because we’re telling the story of our human experience. Because what’s happening inside me is also happening inside you.
We have to be willing to speak up.
The risky part always comes when we reveal who we really are or what we really think. If someone doesn’t respond or doesn’t like it or, worse, doesn’t like us, that’s when shame can creep in. We don’t feel good enough. We wonder if our stories aren’t worth telling.
But the antidote to shame is vulnerability. The more honest we are, the more shame dissipates. And it’s not always in a grand literary context. It can be in the quiet of your own home.
We use our voices to connect with each other. We listen and speak, we read and write. We offer what we can, the only thing we can, which is ourselves.
We do it because we want to feel something.
Leave a Reply