How to Find Your Voice as a Writer
Don’t write what you know, use what you know
A decade ago I was given my first major magazine assignment. The twist is that it wasn’t actually MY assignment. I had been hired to rewrite an article that had been done by someone else. Poorly, it appears. I don’t know who this inadequate writer was. Possibly William Faulkner. Regardless, the copy filed by the writer was dull and lifeless, and my editor told me that my job was to make it “voicier.”
My assignment was to breathe life into the words by imbuing them with my own ESSENCE, which tends to be clear and direct and gleefully profane. The irony is that my own revision of the story ALSO never saw the light of day. But I must have made it voicier somehow, because I kept getting work from that editor, even assignments for articles I was allowed to write from scratch!
You can make your own writing voicier, too — the voice you use for your first novel, for the next email you write today, for your 8 millionth tweet, anything. Given that many of you are stuck inside right now, with nowhere else to go, you might even have the time to do it. But before I hand you your bluebook exam, I need to explain to you what voice is.
Your voice is you on the page. It’s the sum total of your influences and your life experiences — all built into…
