Every writer is told, sooner or later, to find their authentic voice. That we should try to write true to the person that we are. For me, that is good advice, because my authentic voice is a simplistic one. It has to be given my background. I’m not sure that I could change it to anything else, even if I wanted to.
Let’s start at the beginning.
At school, writing was something that we had to do, once we had learnt to write, that is. For me, I don’t recall being a natural when it came to writing. If anything, like most things at school, it was a chore. I tended to prefer lessons like games or art.
Writing could be hard work, especially the grammar side of it. Turning an idea, a story, into something that read as it sounded in my mind did not come easy to me. I’m tempted to say that is still the case. I have to work on that all the time. One of the things that I have noticed about grammar checking software (especially AI), is that it doesn’t always recognise the authentic voice when making recommendations.
It all sounds simple enough, as if your voice is a fixed thing waiting to be discovered, like a lost sock behind the sofa. For years, I had no ambition to find it anyway, because to be a writer was not something that I wanted to be. At school, I had no desire to be a writer.
There are authors who say that they always wanted to write. From an early age they had that desire. But that wasn’t the case for me. In part, I put that down to my background. The idea of a creative career, like writing, wasn’t encouraged. My life was expected to go in a different direction, to a world of physical work.
I found my interest in writing much later in life, but it took a death in the family to bring it out. It was after my mother died that I wrote Son of My Father. That gave me a desire to write more. I now have three further books nearing completion.
I now like writing. To write with my own authentic voice, shaped by history, observation, the good and bad of life. For memoir-leaning writers, this can feel risky. Personal truth does not arrive neatly packaged. It comes from memory, with doubt and fear.
There is also the worry of exposure. When are your values, flaws, and uncertainties visible on the page? Should we soften our voice and edit out the rough edges of life? There are lots of rough edges. What is it that the reader wants and will connect to?
The challenge is learning to adapt.
I do think that the more I write, the more my voice changes over time. I think I am a better writer now than five years ago. Much better than fifty years ago. Not a great writer — I doubt that will ever be the case, but my writing has evolved. I just want to write the best that I can.
My authentic voice today is not the same as five years ago, but I see that as growth, not loss. Writing is a journey. It means trusting that your way of seeing the world is enough. And it means understanding that your authentic voice, at its best, is about sounding true.
Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash
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