Claiming my voice

Over the years I've had a lot of one to one appointments with agents and editors at writing conferences.  I've lost count of the number of times they've told me that I ought to write in a different way.  I've been told my writing is too gentle, that I ought to adopt a more sassy style.  Perhaps I need to write in first person present tense.

There's a big problem with those suggestions.  They aren't me.  I've been writing over thirty years and I know who I am as a writer and I've honed my voice and my style over that time.  I've claimed my own voice and I use it when a write.

But it's difficult when we're faced with this barrage of suggestions not to give in and do what these venerated people, the pillars of the publishing industry, suggest.  But if we do, I believe we lessen our chances of achieving publication not increase them.

We have to trust our instincts.  We have to write the way which is natural for us.  In the end, what those same editors and agents want - they say - is a fresh new voice.  They're not going to get it by making us write like an author who's already published.  They're going to get that fresh new voice by allowing us to be who we are on the page, by allowing us to tell our story in our own way.

If you read a lot you will have absorbed a great deal of knowledge about writing.  And if you write a lot you will turn what you know into your unique way of communicating with the world.  Yes, we do have to produce properly-plotted stories without excess description and dialogue, but we also have to bring that world alive in our own way.  We do that instinctively, in our choice of words, the way we structure our sentences and paragraphs.

We have inbuilt instincts when we come to write that tell us how well we're doing in realising that shining vision we keep in our heads.  Trust them.  Write about your world in your way,  claim your own voice,