Finding Your Voice, by Les Edgerton

For the first few pages of Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality in Your Writing, I didn’t think I’d get much out of it. Les Edgerton didn’t sound like any writing teacher I’d ever listened to. By the time I’d finished reading Chapter One I felt more at home, and I knew I’d continue reading. Why? Les Edgerton understands voice, and he writes about it in a way I understand. What put me off at first? Surprise. I’m not used to finding such a friendly voice in a book on writing.

For years, as a young writer, I wondered what the heck people meant when they referred to “voice” in writing. How can writing have a voice? It doesn’t speak, it sits there on the page, silent. You R-E-A-D it. Were these people hearing things? After a while it sank in, what voice is, but I still didn’t know how to get it into my work. Sometimes I found myself writing in a voice I knew was mine. But where had it come from? If I lost it, how would I find it again? And I did lose it. It came and went like that of a fourteen-year-old boy soprano. This distressed me, because I knew no editor would accept my work unless it had a consistent voice.

Enough from me. Les Edgerton has a lot to say about voice, and the way he says it is as important as what he says. He shows how a writer’s voice is much like that used for speaking. It expresses who the writer is. It’s not the writerly style assumed by new writers as they struggle to follow the rules—punctuation-perfect but without any soul, the kind of writing that gives you nightmares about diagramming sentences. It’s not the mechanical style of writing I was forced to adopt as a technical writer. It’s not the monotone of academia or the teletype chatter of a newspaper. Voice reveals the living, breathing person behind the words. It can be casual or formal, it can follow the rules or not. But in every case voice reflects the individual writer and, when needed, the fictional character.

Unfortunately, finding your voice isn’t as easy as defining it. We all struggle with it, whether we’re attempting to write something publishable or not. Have you ever agonized over the wording of a sympathy note? A get-well card for someone with a serious illness? You were likely struggling to find your voice. It’s when we’re tied up in knots to write something important that we’re most likely to lose it.

Finding Your Voice first helps us understand how and why we lose our voices. Then it takes us through common obstacles to a natural voice, offering ways to recognize and overcome those obstacles, with exercises designed to help us jump back into our real skins in our writing.

One bold departure from the lessons of other contemporary writing books is Edgerton’s assertion that we don’t have to write the first draft without editing. In many writing books today we’re instructed not to edit during the first draft. “Write in the flow,” we’re told. “Don’t listen to your internal editor.” While Edgerton doesn’t put down the writing and creativity teachers who profess this, he does acknowledge that’s not the best way for all writers. He himself edits while in his first draft. He says it saves him a lot of editing time. He gives the writer permission to do the same, provided it’s your voice editing, not the belittling voice of your “Critic Nag Dude.” For some of us this approach offers a perverse kind of freedom. It’s not just okay to write freely without editing. It’s also okay to edit as you go, to let your editor come out and play with your writer, if that’s the best way for you.

Edgerton demonstrates that a strong voice is recognizable on the page, in his “Recognizing the Elements of Style Exercise,” at the end of Chapter Six. I amazed myself by recognizing most of the seven authors, five of whom I’d never read before. Which reminds me to encourage you writers who’re unsure of your voice: Don’t just read this book. Do the exercises as well.

Finding Your Voice