Hello George!

Finding one’s writing voice is so basic, so foundational to one’s success as a professional writer, that if one doesn’t get perfectly quiet and start to drill down to where all writer’s voices reside, one may as well trade in one’s computer.

Your first point about relaxing is so key, George. It turns me off to hear folks go on and on about how they can’t seem to relax. Of course, what is relaxing to one person is a jangling cacophony to others. Personally, I sit with eyes closed in my LaZBoy recliner and turn on classical piano music and let it waft over my ears. No one else is in my space. No TV. No laptop in my lap (yet). I am the music and the music is me. Get it?

Right on about paying attention to authors you like. On my Web site, I credit my favorite authors. I write short fiction. My favorite short fiction writers are Benjamin Percy, Annie Proulx, and Sherman Alexie, just to name a few. I like their unique voices. They write as if they were creating their own unique genre. They are fearless.

I was raised in a very strict middle-class household where making a good public impression was very important. It was always about being politically corect.

Now that I am an adult with a writing voice that is uniquely mine, I write like my characters speak. My urban tough guys say “Fuck” and my soldiers live like there may be no tomorrow for them. My parents would be horrified, because their only son uses such reality when he tells stories. What would the bridge club think? Ha!

Regarding asking for critiques from other writers, writer beware!

Be very selective about choosing a reviewer or critiquer of your precious baby.

I learned early on not to ask writers who only write non-fiction to critique my short stories. They can’t relate. I never ask Christian genre writers to review my work. Not because of their religion but because of their politically-correct stance on certain social issues. I do seek out other short fiction writers for critiques, but I first make sure that that writer has the spelling and grammar skillset that I hold to . Unfortunately, there are way too many would-be writers who have never bothered to master the language or the rules of grammar. I say to them. STOP WRITING until you can craft a sentence correctly and spell all your chosen words without relying on your spell-checker.

Yes, writers write. But churning out 2000 pages of crap every day does not a writer make. See the above paragraph for an explanation.

At LongShortStories, I host two short story contests each year. My sincere hope is that I will discover a short story writer of such top caliber that I can award them one of my three great prizes. But alas. So many of my entrants, God bless them, shoot themselves in the proverbial foot by not knowing how to punctuate dialogue properly. Or they write like this: Subject Verb Predicate. Subject Verb Predicate.

BORING! These folks haven’t found their voice yet or they would realize that they wouldn’t dare speak this way in real life! Mix it up. Break the old-school rules if it makes sense to the story! Occasionally start a sentence with a preposition. Craft a powerful one-word sentence-paragraph to grab me as a reader. Be brave!

Ah yes, writers’ workshops. Sounds kind of warm and fuzzy, right? But beware. There are a TON of folks out there ready to take your dead presidents in exchange for so-called writing advice. I’ve never been one for anything that saps of “group think” and I’m afraid that I feel that most of these workshops aren’t worth the investment . I’d much rather see an emerging writer invest in a copy of “30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary” and “The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage” or something similar. NOW HEAR THIS: If you don’t have your writing founded upon such bedrock, then you are a poser. Sorry, but you are.

Regarding your last point, write like you speak, I think I have hammered home my point about this in the above paragraphs. But, as a short story writer, I strive to write like my protagonist speaks to me in my head as i roll my little mind movie about him before hitting one key on my keyboard.

I can honestly say, that as a professional short fiction writer, I have literally thousands of voices inside my head at any one time, each one locked and loaded for the next time I need that unique character to speak.

How would I characterize MY writer’s voice?

In a nutshell, I strive for honesty and succintness. I employ poetic devices to make my writing flow off the tongue like warm butter. I wear my cinematographer’s hat and use evry visual trick in my lexicon to bring my story to life for my appreciative readers. I strive to resonate with each of the senses with my writer’s tuning fork, so that my readers smell the roses, taste the gourmet cooking, see the battlefield, hear the cry of the abandoned baby, touch the love of my characters’ life like he or she would behind closed doors.

If I am successful in achieving all of the above, then, yes, that is my writer’s voice. Not yours, but mine alone. Unique and easily recognizable over time.

You too can develop a unique writer’s voice. But don’t expect to achieve it overnight without a modicum of hard work and years of practicing this special craft we call … writing.

Good luck to you all!