Writing is Hard

Writing is hard. We often look towards others before us to give inspiration in our writing styles. Whether that is through the books we've read or the mannerisms that we've picked up through life. 

However, it isn't easy to translate your own style into something that also seems professional for the environment your writing for. 

In High-School, we all try to put on this "expert" academic voice that seems like we know all about what we're writing about. But, through this struggle, we tend to lose our ability to write like ourselves, constantly thinking that we need to write like we are an a world class historian who has seen and experienced all there is about the subject we're tasked with.

It is difficult then, to find your own voice as your redevelop your writing as an adult.

William Zinser, author of On Writing Well discusses this in his chapter on "The Sound of Your Voice", saying:

"Don’t alter your voice to fit your subject. Develop one voice that readers will recognize when they hear it on the page, a voice that’s enjoyable not only in its musical line but in its avoidance of sounds that would cheapen its tone: breeziness and condescension and clichés."

Sounds easy, enough. But the complexity that surrounds this statement seems astounding.

Zinser himself discusses how important taste is in writing, avoiding the use of clichés and more to sound more eloquent, and even saying to take inspiration through your heritage.

Where is the line between writing in your own voice and writing eloquantly? Most inexperienced writers won't know the difference, as Zinser notes himself when he posted Governor Wilbur Cross' Thanksgiving Proclamation for his students, saying

"I realized that several of them thought I was being facetious. Knowing my obsession with simplicity, they assumed that I regarded Governor Cross’s message as florid excess."

Knowing the boundary of your own words is essential in writing, and even though I act as a contrarian, I understand where Zinser comes from. 

Writing in itself is not unique, it is through the writers efforts, his context as well as his content, that make the writing unique.

By actively trying to become someone who you are not, you become a faceless nobody, or as Bryan Ye discusses in his article, "Why You Need To Write In Your Own Voice",

"I’ve found that if you’re trying to write like somebody else, there’s this certain inauthenticity that comes from it. It’s almost like trying to talk like somebody else — practically impossible."

We need to write as ourselves, not as some made up professional, or expert or anything else. Write like it is personal. If its not something you are an expert of, read and learn until you feel confident to be the expert. 

Ye concludes his article by circling back to the following, "...everything ties back to the simple idea that you need to write in your own voice — because there’s no other way to write."

Ye, B. (2018, May 8). Why you need to write in your own voice. Medium. Retrieved February 18, 2023, from https://writingcooperative.com/why-you-need-to-write-in-your-own-voice-531586bdb31c 

Zinsser, W. (2013). The Sound of Your Voice. In On Writing Well. essay, Harper Paperbacks.