On creating with your authentic voice

Spoiler: it's all the real you!

Happy almost-full moon in Pisces! Perfect “weather” for diving into our creations….

In the writing world, there is a lot of talk about voice—the tone and affect of your writing. Perceived authenticity is one of the highest currencies.

I once spoke with a book group who were reading two pieces I’d written—a short story and a personal essay. “That short story is cool but it reads like you wrote it to impress people in college,” they informed me. (Well, okay, they weren’t entirely wrong…but I still wrote it because I wanted to.) “But that personal essay—wow! OMG! That’s the real you!”

“Oh,” I said politely, thinking of course it was the real me because it was literally about me rather than a fictional character, and I went home grateful that I had enough experience in these settings to be able to separate other people’s perceptions from my own experience of, well, my own work.

I always think it’s interesting that many people feel the license to pass judgment over what is the most “true,” “honest,” “real” you/writerly voice (or other creative medium). Of course, they are simply reacting to the type of work that they personally resonate with the most. It’s a normal reaction that can be frustrating for creative types, even though it’s often ostensibly well-meaning.

But I digress. Lest you think I’ve superhumanly overcome any shade of self-doubt and create whatever I please at any moment, allow me to present an episode not from ten years ago, or five, or even three months ago, but…well, two nights ago.

There I was: scrolling through social media, stopping to look through another writer’s photos. Why is that not me? I thought as I put the phone down and sulked off to do something glamorous like brush my teeth. Why am I not writing in the style that person does? I have written like that! Maybe that’s my real voice! Maybe writing any other way is a sell-out!

(Let me tell you: as someone who’s written both literary fiction and the highest of high fantasy, there’s plenty of opportunity for questioning this situation from both angles.)

I woke up at 5a.m. (yes, just yesterday morning) with the resounding reminder that it is ALL my “authentic voice.” THAT’S RIGHT, I said, practically jumping out of bed (but in reality just squinting at the not-yet-dawn light).

I AM A CHAMELEON, I remembered. (Everyone who really “gets me” as a writer has told me this.) Maybe it’s my irrepressible Gemini moon that wants to try expressing everything in all the ways, but the truth is, my “real voice” is actually the ability (and desire, and deep delight in) expressing myself in all sorts of apparently different voices. So whether that’s the high fantasy, or a deeply meditative literary novel about Leonardo da Vinci, or a silly, sparkly cozy fantasy for kids, or one of several dozen other things I’m not going to list here but believe me, they exist in my head, and someday they will find their way onto paper—all of these ways of expression are the real me. One is not better than another. Every single one has merit and purpose of its own.

Once someone told me, after reading my first (published) novel: “In a few places I even heard your real voice come through!”

But…the whole thing was written in my real voice…because I wrote it.

It might just be that the full breadth and scope of our real voices are not for everyone, and that’s okay. If other people perceive certain creations to be more or less “us,” that’s their problem. (Unless, of course, it’s someone who you trust so deeply that such a comment gives you pause to really think. Such is the paradox of creative life!)

No, the real problem comes when we start to believe that we should only be one thing—or maybe multiple things when our hearts are yearning just to express in a single way. (Seems less common, but possible.) We think we should dial it in and stick to our brand. We will lose followers if we engage in the fullness of our expression—the entirety of who we are. But our humanity matters so much more than what the ego thinks it wants. Expressing who we are in our fullness must be why we’re here.

So go off brand. Be a rebel. That doesn’t mean you have to play everything for shock value. I think that’s a misperception we can wander into, as well. Rebellion can be gentle. One person’s authenticity is another person’s pulp fiction. “You didn’t reinvent the wheel,” they may tell us, but for ourselves, maybe we actually just did.

Over to you: where do you slide into comparison? How do you know when you’re creating something that’s 100% self-certified YOU?