Finding Your Authentic Writing Voice: Excerpt from my book: A Friendly Guide to Writing and Ghostwriting

Writing in a voice that is not your own is like trying on a coat that’s the wrong size. Maybe the sleeves are too long or the material is bursting at the seams. I know how that feels. I ghostwrote for so many years and I got so good at writing in someone else’s voice, I lost my own in the process. This is tragic for a writer. I’d spent so much time pretending I wasn’t me, racing toward short, unreasonable deadlines and trying to please so many people along the way, I’d gotten in the habit of writing too fast, chasing the clock and counting pages instead of listening to my instincts. I felt like a writing drone, using words and phrases that pleased other people but they were oversimplified or too fancy for my taste. I wasn’t taking the time (I didn’t have the time) to contemplate, rewrite, and go deeper into the heart of the descriptions and emotions. I didn’t have the luxury of letting the material sit for a week or two and get back to it with fresh eyes. I was rushing, I was lost and I wasn’t sure how to find myself again.

When I stopped ghostwriting, it felt like I was lifting a sheet and exposing my raw skin to the sun for the first time. No longer hidden by the white cotton folds that had swaddled my expression, I began to search for my own voice. During this process, a friend gifted me with a copy of Wisdom of the Heart, a book of essays by author Henry Miller. In an excerpt from an essay about being authentic in his writing, he wrote:

“I began from scratch, throwing everything overboard, even those . . . {authors} whom I most loved. Immediately I heard my own voice I was enchanted: the fact that it was a separate, distinct, unique voice sustained me. It didn’t matter to me if what I wrote should be considered bad. Good and bad had dropped out of my vocabulary. I jumped with two feet into the realm of aesthetics, the non-moral, non-ethical, non-utilitarian realm of art. I had found a voice, I was whole again.”

That spoke to me. I had been analyzing my words, sentences, phrases, and vocabulary, rewriting them and reading them aloud until one day I couldn’t stand it any more. I stopped, threw everything overboard, and returned to Square One. I looked inside to find my passion, my energetic self-expression for which other people had chastised me all my life. “You’re too loud,” they’d said, “too rambunctious, too pushy, and much too dramatic. You throw your arms around when you talk. You move too fast.”

Over the years, I had suppressed so much of myself to please other people, I hardly knew who I was anymore. I’d forgotten what I liked and didn’t like. I forgot what felt natural and what didn’t. But when I let go of judgments and criticism and looked at what I’d written in a neutral way, I got more comfortable as I made my way through the maze of confusion. I noticed phrases I would never say and others that I kept repeating. I scrutinized my material for unnecessary words such as, “but,” “very,” “just” and “really.” I found adjectives that were redundant and I slashed them. I got rid of most of the adverbs. I edited out clichés and I removed exclamation points. I was refining my diamond in the rough, shaping clearer facets, and making it shine. I began to enjoy my craft again, the best reward for any writer.

It’s important to be patient with yourself because no matter how hard you search, you don’t always recognize your authentic voice when you first find it. Maybe you think your voice is so sophomoric, it would be better to copy someone else’s. Maybe you’ve been away from your work for so long, you’ve forgotten what you had in mind when you started. Maybe you’re searching for the right words but they keep slipping away. Or maybe the voice you find is not a voice that you like.

A client for whom I was writing a memoir was distressed when I submitted an initial draft to her. “What don’t you like?” I asked her. I had spent a great deal of time tuning into her voice and thought I’d done a good job of recreating it on the page.

“It sounds just like me,” she said.

“Is that a problem?” I asked.

“Yes, because I don’t like how I sound.”

Whatever you think of your voice, you have to find a way to accept it and get it on the page. I found it helpful to write a short story about my childhood. You might want to try it. When I read it back, parts of it sounded like a foreign language, it was so not “me.” But other parts were right on and I was able to determine the difference. It felt like I was walking from room to room in my childhood home, dredging up memories and trying to fit them into the life I was living now. Was that my bedroom or my sister’s? Did I like the same food back then that I liked now? How did I express myself? Was I a soother, a yeller, a people pleaser, an encourager or a criticizer? Had my language matured along with my body and mind?

I realized that I didn’t dislike my writing. I just needed it to sound like me so I changed my approach. If I thought awkwardly about something, I wrote it that way. If I was angry, I cursed on the page. If I felt sexy, I used sensual words and phrases that turned me on. I stopped trying to wrap everything up, all neat and tidy, because real life doesn’t work that way. When I dropped into a familiarity with myself, writing became less complicated and more satisfying and I began to look forward to my sessions.