[Writing-Publishing] Finding Your Voice
Are your posts, articles, stories - truly irreplaceable? Do readers hang on, expectant every week when your newsletter finally comes out?
Would anyone care if your writing disappeared?
Your voice gone, your postings missing?
Many, if not most writers never find their own voice – that one way of expression which sets you apart from anyone else in your field.
I’ve read of a prolific author who reported that he spent the first seven years of his career re-learning how to write after he’d discovered all his writing problems had come from those required college classes in English he was force fed long ago.
And out of some 277 texts on the writer’s craft, I was able to get down to only 12 books of any worth – because the bulk of them got boring within the first few paragraphs. The rest of their book was just material that others had gone over before. Many times.
The best books on writing had the common feature that they were written almost as a sidebar by authors who had already produced several dozen published books that sold well. Only after they discovered their own voice, they were able to tell others about their specific and unique approach to writing.
Sure, I’ve found academics who wrote in their spare time, churning out books on writing that sold well enough for a traditional publisher to keep giving them contracts. But their books were all also-rans. They contributed nothing but yet another rehashing of already-known data.
Almost anyone can write a how-to book. Anyone can research the tips and tricks of doing just about anything in this always-on Internet life of ours.
But if that Internet were turned off tomorrow, would anyone go find and buy your hard-copy work? Would it wind up in a library where people were queued up waiting for its return so they could have their chance to read it?
The advantage you have in our day is that your Print On Demand book and ebook will never go out of print. That still doesn’t mean it’s any good.
Your voice will determine whether people keep reading after the first paragraph. Your consistency will entice them to read to the very end - and then want your next in series.
And all that decides whether you contribute something to the field that no one has already said several times before.
Be distinctive. Find your voice. Contribute. Write a perennial classic that continues to have reader demand long after you’re gone. Be mentored only by those who succeeded like that.
You can, you know.