Finding Your True Writer's Voice

By Linda Jo Martin

Experience is the path toward finding your true writer's voice You may start your writing career by sub-consciously imitating a writer you greatly admire, but in the end, you'll find the greatest satisfaction comes from being yourself.

Here are three exercises for shifting away from imitation and writing from your core being.

1. Play word association with yourself. Write the word “blue” at the top of a blank sheet of paper, then go from one word to another all the way down the page. Try for longer words:

Have fun and do this daily before writing. Exercise that vocabulary!

2. Have a conversation with yourself. Listen to your mind's self-talk. Delve deep down and write everything you hear inside. Figure out which phrases are hard-wired into your brain.

Get the idea? Keep the conversation with your inner self going for about ten minutes. You can try this exercise more than once. Why not do it daily before you start writing?

3. Close your eyes and meditate on a situation you believe would be utterly cool. This is to be an exciting place, wherever that might be for you. You may have several ideas come to mind. Choose just one to focus on – save your other ideas for later.

Get into that one utterly cool scene. See the sights. Feel your surroundings.

As you imagine yourself there take note of any events as you'll be writing about them later.

Sniff the air – what do you smell?

Turn around. Turn all the way around, if possible, looking at everything there is to see.

What can you touch? Handle it, taking note of the sensations.

What words describe the way things feel?

Is there anything there for you to taste? If so, do so now.

And what can you hear? Examine that.

After you have explored your very cool world – it is time to write about it. Using all your mental notes, write down where you've been and what you were doing there.

Make this as short or long as you like. It is your world, your sensations, your imaginary events. Enjoy them!
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About the author: Linda Jo Martin is a ten-year resident of the Klamath River Valley, a novelist, an artist, a content writer for Squidoo.Com,and a Bigfoot researcher. In her spare time she travels through the state of California, writing down her observations for the travel website, Journey! California.
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