But if readers lock in to your signature voice, it will take them to a different place.  Your readers can actually “hear” your unique signature voice through your words – whether they are on paper or on a screen.

It has to do with your writing style.

But deeper yet, it is the uniqueness of your person, your individuality, flowing through the print.  It’s a bit abstract, but once we understand some of the keys in discovering and using our unique writing voice, we will see the fruit.  Your choice of words, the way you use them, even the more creative (and sometimes non-standard) use of punctuation help to release your voice.

Here are some concepts from Joy Tanksley, a middle school English teacher.  I’m blending in some of my own thoughts with her’s …

Write About What You Know with Passion

Let it flow from your heart through your mind to the page or screen.  If you write just from the top of your mind, it will show.  If you are just regurgitating information without passion, it will be sensed.  It will not be in your voice.  It has to be close to your heart.  You have to care about it.  Don’t just write what you think would be popular or what is currently being talked about, unless it is a heart issue with you.

This is about authenticity.  Don’t try to sound like someone else.  Your readers will sense an intangible something that is missing.  They may not necessarily be able to define or articulate it, but they will pick it up.  When that happens, we lose them.  Is not much (or even all!) of life like this?  Relationships.  Business.  Leadership.

Immerse Yourself in the Flow

This is a great exercise that Joy Tanksley has her students do every day.  It’s a three-minute writing warm-up.  Pick a thought or a writing prompt.  Set a timer for three minutes.  Then let it flow – start writing immediately.  Don’t let the pencil or pen come off the paper.  Don’t let your fingers come off the keyboard.  Don’t edit.  Don’t censor yourself.  There is one goal: fluency.  Release as much writing as you can in three minutes.  The focus at this point is quantity, not quality.  What comes out should be natural and authentic.  Your words will have the ring of your unique voice.

This kind of daily exercise will tune your voice and train your inner person to find the flow as you write.  When you’re actually writing something that you want others to see, you can use a similar approach.  You can come back later and take things out, add, edit – but you will discover that your initial draft will have a signature voice to it: your unique writing voice.

Forget About ‘Standard English’ – At Least at First

I enjoy grammar.  Once in a while, a good Friday evening for me is coming home from Borders with a book like The Glamour of Grammar – A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English by Roy Peter Clark!  Truly, a refreshing grammar book!  Weird, huh?

But during the first draft, when you’re after that “sweet spot”  – getting in touch with your passionate heart and releasing the flow – your voice will be stifled if you pay too much attention to proper English grammar.  The surest way to kill passion and flow is to edit as you write your first draft.  Simply write.  Try to write somewhat faster.  Later you can come back and edit and polish your writing.  Even here, though, we have to be careful that we do not squelch our writing voice with a preoccupation with conventional grammar.

Clark, a distinguished writing teacher, makes a case for this in ‘The Glamour of Grammar.’  Sometimes you have to ignore the grammar check.  Use fragment sentences.  Use serial commas.  There are creative and diverse ways to use punctuation, allowing your voice to ring through and yet remain within a basic framework of solid English writing.  Become a student of the craft of writing.  Experiment.  When you are rereading and rewriting your work, make decisions on what best communicates your story or content.

Are you supposed to write?  Then you have a unique story to tell.  There is unique content or information that someone is waiting on.  But, you also have a unique writing voice to tell that story, to convey that content.  Don’t settle for a voice beneath you … insist on your signature writing voice.

Stephen Covey helps us to think about ‘voice’ in the broader sense of our potential.  In ‘The 8th Habit,’ he writes about the 4 human capacities that empower us to make a difference.  Short post on this here.

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More often than not, writers, like other creatives, tend to be disorganized.  We’re surrounded by too much clutter.

Are you writing or do you want to?  Do a 360 and take a look around.  See what I mean?

Our mistake is that we accept it: “It’s my inner artist that makes me this way.”

It really is a form of the “RESISTANCE” that Steven Pressfield has dealt with.  It’s self-sabotage.  Good writing is resisted.  But if we’re authentic, we’ll acknowledge that most of our resistance is self-activated.

Mess is a stress-inducer.  And stress is a creativity killer.

This issue is so common with writers, a number of good voices have dealt with it.  Here’s helpful perspective from Jeff Goins.

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Kindle eBook sales are going vertical. The yellow line is Amazon's physical book sales.

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Benjamin E. Mays lived with a conviction about the sacredness of time – even one minute of time.  How could our lives change if we had the same belief?

A minister, scholar, educator, social activist and advisor to several presidents, Dr. Benjamin E. Mays (1894-1984) was born to former slaves in Epworth, South Carolina.  His childhood home is now a historic site and museum in Greenwood County.

He served as the Dean of the School of Religion at Howard University (1934-1940) and then as the President of Morehouse College (1940 to 1967).

His Legacy

Benjamin Mays was inspired by Frederick Douglas, a former slave and a leader in the Civil War-era abolitionist movement, and Booker T. Washington, also a former slave and advocate for the African-American community at the turn of the 20th century.  He was one of the most articulate critics of segregation in the South in the years leading to the modern Civil Rights Movement.

He was a mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King beginning in his college days and continuing until his assassination in Memphis on April 4, 1968.  MLK referred to him as a “spiritual mentor” and “intellectual father.”  He delivered the eulogy at King’s funeral.

He instilled two concepts in Martin Luther King and all of his students: the dignity of all human beings and the incompatibility of American ideals and the entrenchment of racism and discrimination.

Dr. Benjamin E. Mays wrote 9 books, almost 2000 articles and received 56 honorary degrees.

Q4U: With Benjamin E. Mays, do we too see time as spiritual, as sacred?  What if eternity is in time as we understand it?  Even one minute of time.  If we see time as sacred, how will it transform our schedule, our lives?

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Resistance blocks the way to any growth or accomplishment – starting a diet, beginning a quest for spiritual advancement, or launching an entrepreneurial venture.  The Resistance stands between the life we live and the unlived life within.

What is this naysayer within?”  Have you encountered the Resistance in writing or in any creative endeavor?  I bet you have.  I’ve recently read The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by novelist Steven Pressfield.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”  These are words from the 6th century BC.  Sun Tzu was a Chinese military general who wrote the classic The Art of War, a work on Chinese military strategy.  Steven Pressfield’s title is a play on Sun Tzu’s title, The Art of War.

Pressfield labels the enemy of creativity “RESISTANCE.”

Blocking Growth Or Accomplishment

Resistance blocks the way to any growth or accomplishment – starting a diet, beginning a quest for spiritual advancement, or launching an entrepreneurial venture.  The Resistance stands between the life we live and the unlived life within.  Pressfield has a lot to say to writers or anyone seeking to release their creative energies.

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will assume any form, if that’s what it takes to deceive you. It will reason with you like a lawyer or jam a nine-millimeter in your face like a stickup man. Resistance has no conscience. It will pledge anything to get a deal, then double-cross you as soon as your back is turned. If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get.

This internal foe, this force operates within each of us – self-sabotage, self-deception, self-corruption.  Writers have referred to it as “block,” a paralysis that shuts down creativity and productivity.

Anything to Stop the Work You Are Called to Do

The Resistance wants to prevent us from doing the work we are called to do.  We are to discover who we are and to become it.  And we are to discover the work we are called to do and do it.  The more important something is related to who we are to become or what we are to do, the more Resistance we will experience.

Someone once asked the great author Somerset Maugham if he wrote on a schedule or only when inspiration struck him.  “I write only when inspiration strikes me.  Fortunately it strikes me very morning at nine o’clock sharp.”

Creativity demands labor.  Emotional labor.  Creative discipline.  The Resistance to creativity has to be overcome.

Can we win against this Resistance?

Become a “Pro”

One of the ways is to cultivate the attitude of a “Pro.”  Shun the amateur mindset.  Turning “Pro” is a state of mind.  It is hard-core self-discipline.  Stop procrastinating.  Simply, showing up everyday and doing the work we are called to do is how we start to win.  The decision to do the focused work on a consistent basis is a key in overcoming the Resistance.

Robert McKee writes in the Forward how the professional acts step-by-step, day-by-day: “preparation, order, patience, endurance, acting in the face of fear and failure – no excuses.”  Mastery of the craft is the focus of the professional.

Getting Inspired

Pressfield than focuses upon inspiration.  When we begin the work, inspiration will come.

“When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us … we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings.  Ideas come.  Insights accrete.”

He writes that inspiration flows from a “higher realm.”  Ultimately, inspiration is sourced in the divine.

Killing Fear

Adversity and fear must be overcome.  The “mother of all fears” is that we will actually finish our work.  Will it be accepted?  Will I succeed?  What new demands will be placed upon me?  The Resistance increases the closer we get to the finish line.

The closer we get to accomplishment, the more likely we may be to self-sabotage our own effort.  This is the calling card of the Resistance.  “At this point, Resistance knows we’re about to beat it.  It hits the panic button.  It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it’s got.”

Sun Tzu tells us if we know the enemy and know yourselves, we will be victorious.  In overcoming the Resistance to creativity, we discover something of the nature of the enemy.  And we uncover that the struggle comes from within our very selves.  It’s a quick read.  Insightful.  Inspiring.  Think of it as tough love for yourself.  The War of Art by Pressfield is a kick in the pants you’ll enjoy.

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– Seth Godin