Your writer’s voice can sometimes feel like this elusive, nebulous thing.
Many writers say that you don’t know when you’ll find it, but when you do, it’s like love at first sight – you just just know.
I believe you can cultivate your writer’s voice, and that it’s in you right now – you just have to tap in.
I went on a search for inspiring quotes on writer’s voice. Quotes that I hope you’ll keep nearby when you write, to keep you focused on staying real, vulnerable, and true to yourself. And I made this awesome graphic so that you’ll have something pretty to look at.
Want to read the full posts? Check out all of the links below. (The titles are links)
Chuck Wendig from terrible minds
Voice is not just the result of a single sentence or paragraph or page. It’s not even the sum total of a whole story. It’s all your work laid out across the table like the bones and fossils of an unidentified carcass.
Joshua Fields Milburn of the Minimalists
The shattered rules lying on my cuttingroom floor have shaped my writing voice more than anything else.
Theo Pauline Nestor on the Huffington Post
Head straight into all that is particular and quirky about you.
Steven Pressfield
What voice does the material want? Find that. You the writer are not there to impose “your” voice on the material. Your job is to surrender to the material–and allow it to tell you what voice it wants in order to tell itself.
Thaisa Frank & Dorothy Wall in Finding Your Writer’s Voice
Most writers struggle to unearth voice – not only because one’s own voice is simply too familiar, but also because to speak from your voice means confronting your world, your dreams, and your entire life raw and unsoftened by explanations.
James Scott Bell
When an author is joyous in his telling, it pulses through the words.
Joanne Fedler
Sometimes by reading the way others write, we feel an echo in ourselves, or the flash of a lighthouse bringing us closer to our own voice.
Suddenly Jamie
The true voice of a writer is the nameless fire that burns inside, turning up the heat, licking at mind and heart until it becomes unbearable to wait even a single moment longer before putting pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard.
Dave Robison
Every breathing moment – awake or asleep – has layered depth and breadth and scope to Your Voice. It rumbles like grinding continents, burns like lightning, and whispers like a child on Santa’s knee. It’s authentic and powerful and it’s yours.
Gwen Moss
I believe the beauty of our writing is found in our striking uniqueness; in the lines of our face, the turns and twists of our lives, and from the real-life characters we’ve met.
April Erwin
Finding your voice is a process, a journey to the center of you. You have a unique voice; one God gave only to you. It’s time to dig a little deeper and set it free.
Robin LaFevers
So finding our voice is about having the strength and courage to proclaim that what we have to say matters, that what we feel is relevant, that what fascinates us is worthy of fascination.
Henri Junttila
All you can do right now is to express the voice you have. Do not wait for a-ha moments and big discoveries, because they may never come.
Natalie Goldberg
If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
Louis Menand
What writers hear when they are trying to write is something more like singing than like speaking. Inside your head, you’re yakking away to yourself all the time. Getting that voice down on paper is a depressing experience. When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music.
Leo Babuta
My writing voice is really the voice in my head. It’s not how I talk aloud, but how I talk to myself, in the noisy cavern of my skull. I listen to myself talk, inside, and that’s the voice I try to get down in writing.
Holly Lisle
Voice is born from a lot of words and a lot of work — but not just any words or any work will do. You have to bleed a little. You have to shiver a little. You have to love a lot.
Jeff Bullas
Accepting that you are not perfect but a product of a life journey can empower you to realise, write and reveal the naked you. People will find a voice that is transparent and full of bumps, scrapes and scratches with a rich voice tapestry much more interesting than a mass produced sound of blandness.
Shirley Kawa-Jump
When you find your authentic voice, it’s like stepping into a comfortable pair of shoes. The rhythm and pacing of your words feel right, as if they’re meant just for you.
