What is a 'Writer's Voice?'

If you've always struggled with writing, it is likely because you don't have your "voice."

What does that mean? A writer's voice implies tone, choice in language, and even subject matter. When I was in college, I discovered, for example, that I preferred short sentences. One of my professors told me to write in more complicated and longer sentences. I asked why -- he had no answer.

Those short sentences were the beginning of the discovery of my voice. Over the years, my voice has developed. Little things cropped up -- there was liberal use of semi-colons, colons, dashes and hyphens. And I found that it is really OK to start a sentence with "and."

The easy answer is that your voice is a reflection of how you speak. But it is a little more than that. It is how you think; it is how you perceive the world. You use vocabulary that you wouldn't say. Your sentence structure is simpler -- or more complex -- than your spoken word.

So how do you find your voice? That's for another post.