voice

Your Unique Writing Gift

Published on by Kristi Holl

If you lack confidence in your writing ability… If you doubt that you have anything unique to say to a reader… If you think it doesn’t matter if you share your writing with the world, you’ll want to read this.

Your Writing is Unique

Last week when in Waco, TX, I visited the beautiful Homestead Heritage craft-based community. I found a book there called Write Words: the Grace of Writing by Blair Adams.

If you doubt that you have anything unique to share with the world through your writing, this quote might well change your mind.

You speak with a unique voice that comes from a unique perspective. Just as each person possesses a one-of-a-kind speaking voice, so each possesses just such a writing “voice.” … “if a reader says, ‘That sounds just likeyou,’ take it as a first-rate compliment. No one else experiences the world from precisely the same intersection of relationships and events, from the same angle of vision. No one else has journeyed through the same life. That life has shaped your focus on the world to give you special insights and perspectives, a special mix of knowledge and experience, information and relationships, victories and defeats, joys and sorrows, hopes and dreams. All these enable you to view and understand the world in a particular way. This unique way of seeing and saying means that from experiences re-created in written words, you can uncover and disclose insights and perspectives that will otherwise be lost to the world forever.”

Lost to the world forever: that’s what will happen if you give up on your writing projects. Don’t quit! Don’t let your work be lost to the world forever.

You would be missed.

Voice: Being YOU Is More Than Enough

Published on by Kristi Holl

This weekend I want you to think deeply about a quote I’m going to share with you. It’s from a book I am reading for the third time. Only this time, I am actually doing the exercises in each chapter!

It’s Les Edgerton’s Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality in Your Writing. Editors are always looking for “new voices,” and Edgerton claims that your individual voice is the most important distinctive thing you bring to the page.

Think About This

Here’s the quote. (First he talks about the fact that for the vast majority of us writers, there will always be someone who can write funnier, or deeper, or with more clever character names and beginnings, etc.) Then he says this:

The point being, no matter what you write, there’s a good chance that someone else may do the same thing better.

There’s only one thing another writer can’t do better than you.

And, it only happens to be the most important thing a writer can possess.

Yourself.

Your voice.

They can’t get your personality on their page. And, since a personal voice is the single most important component of writing and the single most important element leading to success, no matter how good the competition may be, you’ve got an edge on them by simply being you.

Think about that this weekend. I believe that it’s true. Then do whatever you need to do to eliminate any beige “writerly” voice you’ve acquired–and get in touch with your own special, distinctive voice. Put that voice on the page.