How would
characterise a writer's 'voice'?
Tone...range...level...'school'...style...
aspiration to be unique …
How
to find it?
Give
yourself time - say three months to thirty years….And try any or all of
these:
Make lists based on your two
favourite books, your two favourite films, your two favourite pieces of
music, your two favourite places, your favourite kinds of food, the nature
of mountains, your star sign. Be wild and free in your list making. Be
playful. Lists are good five-finger exercises for writers. They can form
the inspirational basis for poems, short stories, even novels.
Try 21 days of casual and regular
writing, a la Dorothea Brande – unforced
writing just when you wake up. Don’t look back, just keep writing.
Don’t worry. After twenty-one days, read back through your work and you
will find that you do have a certain style, certain preoccupations and
themes. Then take these themes and develop them in a more deliberate
fashion.
Keep a writer's journal - treat
yourself to good notebooks.
Analyse and copy creatively work
by your favourite writers. Write deliberately in their styles. Then look
back at some of your own work and try to define what your style is.
Keep a scrap-book of your
favourite images, pictures, distinctive newspaper photographs and extracts
and practice the list-writing technique in the form of questions on these
things in your notebook.
Develop your own technique of
focusing on your writing. This may beto find a private place, it may be
the use of particular notebooks, it may be a mantra, it may be that single
glass of red wine...
Don't look to someone else (even
me!) to give you 'rules'. There are no fail-safe rules. Develop your own
rules.
Keep
writing very regularly. Don't miss.
Write like you breathe
- to live.
©
Wendy Robertson 2003
