What sets you apart from the rest of the pack? Think about that. You might be early in your career and think that very little separates you from the legions of people trying to make it in a writing profession. Or you might be experienced. You might have already secured yourself in a creative industry. But what sets you apart?

Think about why you decided to chose writing as a profession? Hopefully it was because you enjoyed reading. Let’s be honest though, if you are trying to make it as a writer you have to be hustling. Who has time for reading when you have to spend the time you aren’t writing and editing and promoting yourself on some type of social media platform.

When the robots finally come for us all, what will set you apart? AI has had a transformative impact on many creative fields since ChatGPT burst on to the scene in November of ’22. In just over a year it became so capable that alarm bells are being raised in several industries. In July of this year the Author’s guild collected over fifteen hundred signatures for a letter to the CEOs of AI companies over a concern about AI using copyrighted works. You can read it here. The reason I am writing this article is just the other day I saw an ad for Grammerly that said it uses AI not just to edit your work but also write it in the first place. So does all this mean the death of the writer? No. Here is why.

What is voice and why is it important? How many stories have been told in Human history? All of them. If you think you are coming up with a creative new story that no one has heard before, you are probably wrong. In fact, it is probable that it’s been told several times before you came up with the idea. So why do we keep telling stories? Why do we keep writing if nothing new is produced? Because your story isn’t the only thing we are interested in. We want to see how you are telling your story. Your unique perspective and voice is the special sauce on the steak we have eaten a million times before.

Writer’s with great voice make the words dance as you read them. They add flavour to the page beyond the words and structures of story. Think for a moment about Earnest Hemingway or Toni Morrison. What about Andy Weir? If you read the Martian you know that his distinct voice sets him apart from so when are reading his work you know it’s Andy Weir.

But what is your voice? Put simply its how you speak on the page. Before we talk about writing though, let’s consider how we learn to speak. Imitation is the name of the game when learning to speak. We hear our parents and siblings making noise and we imitate those noises to get what we need. Then as we get older we add new words to our vocabulary to express more and more complicated concepts. But it’s not simply word choice that defines how we speak. Cadence, pronunciation, and slang create the unique sound of your spoken voice. What job you work, who you spend your time with, and your interests can also have an impact on how you speak. In essence, your voice and how you speak is a reflection of you as a human being. It is the same for your writing voice.

How to find your creative voice?

Step 1. Read:

Your writing voice is a reflection of what you read combined with your spoken voice. This is why reading is so important as a writer. It is helping you develop your voice. And what you read can be used prescriptively. In Dorothea Brande’s book “Becoming a Writer”, she has a section on reading to fill in the literary gaps in your writing. If you want more humour in your piece but don’t know how to do it, read David Sedaris. Specific language feeling elusive? Read Cormac McCarthy. This is also true if you are a copywriter. There are so many good examples of copywriters available online and in print. Head over to Copywriting.org and read their article on the most popular copywriters from 2022. Sure it’s a year old now but they have a pie chart to show you who you should be reading. Go read the writers with the biggest slices. Or just read all of them.

Step 2. Grammar: This is a big one. Writing isn’t about correct grammar. Writing is about effective communication. Good communication doesn’t always have “correct” grammar. But bad grammar will always hinder communication. Think about grammar as the tools you keep in your belt as a writer. When you’re first learning how to use the tools you use them exactly as they are intended, but as you get better you see that they can be used in other more creative ways. Your use of grammar will add depth of flavour to your writing voice. When you are reading consider how the author uses grammar. Do they follow the rules exactly? What rules are they breaking and what effect is it having on you as a reader? Grammar is the foundation of great writing.

Step 3. Practice: there is no getting around this one. If you want to define your voice you need to write. If you want to be a writer you have to write. You need to take the techniques you learned in your prescriptive reading and apply them to your writing. Remember that not everything you write needs to see the light of day. So give yourself permission to be bad. When you are starting out you don’t need to be a good writer, you need to be a consistent writer. I heard this following piece of advice once about exercise but I think it applies to writing or just about anything you are trying to learn. I have forgotten who said it so if you know leave a comment below. “Is it better to brush your teeth three times a week for an hour or everyday for a couple minutes?”

Don’t think you need to have long writing sessions to get better. In fact this might actually hinder your progress. You might be able to reach your goal one day but what about the next? Can you find two hours every day to practice? And the more you try and fail the greater the pressure is the next time you sit down to write. If you are able to at all. Instead consider writing for fifteen minutes. What can you write in fifteen minutes? A page. Two hundred and fifty words. Double spaced and twelve font size. If you write one page each day, in six days you will have a fifteen hundred word article for your website or blog. In eight days, you will have written a two thousand word short story. Or keep it going for one hundred and twenty days and you have written a novella. Write one page every day for a year you will have written a three hundred and sixty five page novel. Practice doesn’t need to be long. It needs to be consistent.

If any of these tips sound good or helpful or if you have your own tips and tricks leave a comment below