Finding Your Writing Voice
Joe Bunting, the author of the #1 Amazon Bestseller Let’s Write a Short Story!, had the following to say about finding your writing voice in a blog post on The Write Practice, “I asked Ted Dekker how long it takes for an author to find their voice. “It takes four to five novels,” he said. So if the average novel is about 80,000 words, then you have to write 320,000 to 400,000 words before you find your voice. That’s about 1,000 blog posts. Or 400 newspaper columns. Or 80 short stories. And how many have you written? At first, you have to listen to the feedback, he told me. People tell you what they like and what they hate, and you incorporate their feedback into your style. When you have found your voice, though, you don’t listen to the feedback much. You don’t need to. You know who you are and what you’re doing. Until then, you write. You listen. You ask for feedback and you learn to take it graciously.”
Finding your voice takes time but it's worth the journey to get there. Not censoring yourself while writing is what helped me. Put aside the worrying about what others will think about what you are writing. Just focus on being authentic to what you really want to say and leave the rest behind. Happy writing!