How to Develop Your Own Unique Writer's Voice

In my humble opinion...

Be from Texas. Or at least pretend you are. Being socialized to conform and follow others is the opposite of what would be needed to develop a unique voice.

Replace other-directedness (a term from the book The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character), or Pavlovian conformity with inner-directedness. Listen to yourself.

A unique voice is unique because it makes its own rules, the solitary cowboy on the open range. Resourcefulness, freedom, self-reliance and clear-eyed certainty about where you want to go and how you’ll get there. Ironically, almost no literature emerged from Texas until the 20th century.

Of course, certainty is not enough. There is the danger of a firm hand on the wrong note. So the self-assurance of a ready writer must be tempered by the next item.

Read…a lot.

Read widely and often. This is how you get the music inside of you.

Just as great musicians and composers actively listen to other people’s music, really listen and learn from the innovations and techniques of others, good writers are readers.

Trust your gut & be willing to experiment on the page

This is how a writer is born. If you are pleased with your final product, others will be too.

And remember, no matter how successfully you develop your own unique voice or not, there is always room for an accurate writer who accurately conveys “the life passing through you,” as author Miguel Ruiz says, or whatever you set your sights on conveying.

It really takes the pressure off to think in terms of accuracy, bird by bird in the emotional truth of the moment, rather than fret about the sum total of your own unique writer’s voice.