I went on a walk today. Rounding the corner on one of the hills behind my home, the wind rustled the oak trees planted along the gravel road.
I heard it first.
The thin slices of wind like a steak knife breaking the skin of a fresh August tomato... Unmistakable.
It occurred to me then that not all wind sounds like this. I've had the privilege of living all over the world, and the wind sounds differently depending on if you are along the dry and dusty roads of Zambia or deep in the hotel corridor of downtown Melbourne, Australia where the wind whips through and bounces off skyscrapers like a boomerang.
Yet another distinct marker of wind is the lapping of waves in Hobart, Tasmania or shore side by the Cliffs of Dover in England.
Just as the wind announces itself differently depending on its context, so will your writing voice.
That voice may reverberate loudly in a 65-word picture book explaining the letter “P” through pirates and pudding swamps. Yet in the gentle roar of a YA thriller where a young girl's very life feels on the verge of either becoming or falling off a mountainside, your writing voice may peel away with skid marks to leave your reader wanting to know more.
So do not try to copy other writers' voices whom you'd love to emulate. It will not only feel false, but it will seem disingenuous to your reader — who may not remain a reader for long.
Instead, here are my three tips on remaining true to your voice:
Take out your phone. Use a recording app or even just the video feature to record the everyday goings-on in your dinnertime routine. I promise you will hear life: plates clanging, dishes scraping, voices that don't belong to you…but if you forget for just a moment, you will also find that your voice is among the fray. It may surprise you, but it will give you an idea of spoken voice which can often (unbeknownst to us as writers) translate to the written page.
Do a writing exercise that's outside your comfort zone. If you tend toward descriptive writing, Google “writing exercise for suspense” and try it out. Or if you are a poet, take a stab at rewriting the final page of the last novel you read. Choose a new ending and go for it. Often, when we jump from our comfortable writing life, even just for a few minutes, we can go back and see the voice running through it in a way we couldn't before.
Write an email to an old friend. Catch him or her up on where you've been, what life is like right now, and a dream or two you're mulling over for the future. In the everyday, ordinary moments of life shared with someone who knows us deeply, we forget to “put on” the Should Voice. We don't try too hard to write in a way that isn't authentic.
I hope these tips will guide you back to the real you, the voice you can't always pin down but know is there. Just like the wind.