Write Like Yourself: Cultivating an Authentic Voice

spoiler alert: it's the work of a lifetime

Screen still of Lost in Translation (2003)

I am sometimes tempted to use AI to enhance my writing.

And the times that I have done it, I have regretted it.

I suspect it was a self-confidence issue. I know I can write, but what if AI could do it “better”? What if it can make me sound even more competent in a language that is not my mother tongue? For me, being a non-native English speaker, writing in English is a challenge I have embraced and enjoy but there is always the fear of not possessing the language deeply enough to be able to catch all the nuances, to not know which word would perfectly fit what I want to express. The fear of something to be lost in translation, .

The temptation to inhabit the English language even more expressively and completely is strong but there are no shortcuts to this I am afraid. The work of living and breathing a language, to find a voice in that language is the work of a lifetime.

But why don’t you write in Italian instead you might ask? It is a question to be explored in another post, but I have come to realize that honing and finding your voice has very little to do with whether or not you write in your mother tongue. Sometimes your most authentic voice wants to speak a different language.

Funny isn’t it?

Last November I attended a writing retreat which I enjoyed immensely. The advice and insights I gained are still taking time to settle in. All the participants were highly accomplished women who had reached the peak of their careers and now wanted to write. What I realized, besides being in awe of each one of them, was that when it comes to writing nobody is immune from fear. When we sat there to do our exercises we were all the same, united by a desire to express ourselves through writing yet ridden by the insecurity of not being able to do so “as we wanted to.” Much of the workshop was centered on finding our voice as writers, which really is the foundation of it, and one particular thing stuck with me: the advice to write as simply as we could. If you have to choose between two words in the English language, our instructor said, choose the simplest one.

It reminded me of my first workshop during my MFA when I submitted a story and it was completely torn apart by my teacher who called the language I used “too flowery” (I still remember it, and the tears that followed).

You don’t need to carefully pick difficult words to sound like a good writer; you have to be able to express your voice through using the simplest possible language.

To find our voice, we don’t need to add up but rather we need to subtract. We need to find what is the core, the simplest way, the naked truth of what we want to say, knowing that that core, that truth is not something rigid or static, but something that is in constant flux and changes as we do.

It is only after this work of digging, of trimming branches that we can see it emerge.

Recently I decided to get rid of Instagram and I can’t tell you how much my quality of life has improved. A commitment for this year is to really refine my voice and become a better writer. I noticed that whenever I was expressing myself, whether in writing or talking, I was using expressions, ideas, and ways of saying things that were clearly borrowed by the media landscape I surrounded myself with.

There is a certain Instagram or social media lingo that has become so embedded in us that once I noticed it, I could not unsee it. This is the result of flattening out our culture and reducing knowledge to reels, but I digress. I am not interested in dissing Instagram, I just want to share an active example of what I have done to reclaim my voice. I started by creating more space within myself and be more discerning with the content I absorb.

Finding our voice doesn’t mean replacing a certain kind of content with another “more elevated” kind, but we can’t deny that much like the food we digest, the content we expose ourselves to becomes our intellectual nourishment. Instagram has its merits, valuable creators, accessible ideas, but it's also crowded with content that diminishes rather than enriches, so choose wisely what you expose yourself to because it will inevitably influence your voice.

There is a lot of talk about authenticity nowadays, to go back to our essence, the way we were before we were conditioned by our societal expectations. However, we could argue that authenticity, much like our writing voice, is not something static, a point fixed in time we need to return to, but something that flows and is a reflection and product of all that we are. Our voice is not something we find, or something we make up from nothing, but rather something we let emerge. We let it emerge by observing it, without forcing it. It can’t be manufactured by AI; it is part of our essence but is not static. It is a dynamic concept that encompasses our being.

In order to uncover our voice, we have to be able to wear our whole story with all the insecurities and fragilities, as if we’re wearing our most beloved dress. 

Our voice doesn’t have to be perfect but it has to be a direct expression of who we are, and that, whether we like it or not, includes our emotional baggage.

In order to practice finding our voice let’s try this exercise.

Read at least three short stories or essays this week, in three distinctively different voices. Notice the nuances, the differences. Which tone is more colloquial and speaks directly to the reader? Which tone is more elevated and refined?

If you need help finding this material send me a message and I will share some examples.

Then let’s write an essay in three different voices, without publishing any of them. One more elevated, one funnier, one more neutral. These are just examples. You can choose whatever style you like, but after you write this post in these three different declinations, think of what is the one declination of voice that feels most yours, the one that fits you like the dress we talked about above?

I admire writers who write with humour, for example. It's something I wish I could do myself. Yet whenever I've tried, the dress wasn't comfortable enough, perhaps a bit tight at the seams, or the sleeves were a bit too short. In other words, it wasn't me. I like to think I have a great sense of humour, but humour isn't the way I express myself.

Try the exercise and let me know how it goes in the comments.

In the next post I will share a guided meditation for writers. Stay tuned!

Here is what I have been sharing about finding a voice on notes:

If you want to read more about honing your writer’s voice I highly recommend Story Club by George Saunders. I have loved this exercise.