I used to think my voice didn't matter.
Growing up in Charleston, South Carolina, I devoured books by authors who looked nothing like me, lived experiences vastly different from mine, and wrote from perspectives I could only imagine. I loved their stories, but somewhere along the way, I absorbed a quiet lie: that "real" literature, "important" stories, came from certain types of people with certain types of experiences.
When I started writing seriously, I tried to sound like those authors. I wrote characters with problems I'd never faced, in settings I'd only visited in books, using turns of phrase that felt foreign on my tongue. My early drafts read like poorly executed impressions of writers I admired but could never become.
It took years—and a lot of mediocre writing—to realize I was approaching voice all wrong.
Your Voice Is Already There
Here's what I wish someone had told me earlier: you don't find your voice. You uncover it.
Think about it—you already have a voice. It's the one that makes your friends lean in when you tell a story. It's the one that knows exactly how to comfort your child or advocate for yourself in a difficult situation. It's the one that captures the perfect detail in a text message or finds the humor in chaos.
Your voice has been developing since you first learned to communicate. Every conversation, every observation, every moment of processing the world around you has been refining this instrument. When you laugh, when you argue, when you comfort, when you celebrate—that's your voice expressing itself naturally.
The problem isn't that we don't have a voice. The problem is that somewhere along the way, we learned to distrust it.
Maybe a teacher red-penned our natural way of expressing ideas. Maybe we read authors we admired and decided our perspective wasn't sophisticated enough. Maybe we absorbed the message that certain voices matter more than others, and ours wasn't one of them.
So we learned to perform. We started imitating the voices that seemed "right" or "publishable" or "literary." We began writing how we thought we should sound instead of how we actually sound.
But here's the thing about performance: it's exhausting, and readers can sense it. There's a flatness to writing that's trying to be something it's not, like hearing someone speak in an accent that doesn't quite fit.
Your authentic voice, on the other hand, has a resonance that can't be manufactured. It carries the weight of lived experience, the rhythm of genuine thought, the texture of real emotion. It's not perfect—it's better. It's yours.
The work isn't finding your voice—it's getting brave enough to trust it. Brave enough to stop apologizing for the way you naturally see the world. Brave enough to let your personality show up on the page instead of hiding behind literary costumes that don't fit.
This kind of bravery isn't a one-time decision. It's a daily choice to show up authentically, to resist the urge to sound like someone else, to trust that your perspective has value even when it doesn't match what you think readers expect.
My voice carries the cadence of Charleston summers and Sunday morning services. It holds the weight of being a Black woman navigating spaces not always designed for me. It's shaped by my AuDHD brain that sees connections others miss and gets excited about fifteen different projects at once. It's colored by my faith, which doesn't make my stories preachy but does make them hopeful.
For years, I thought these were limitations. Now I know they're superpowers.
What Makes Your Perspective Unique
Every writer brings something to the page that no one else can replicate. Your voice is the sum of:
Your lived experience. The neighborhood where you grew up, the family dynamics that shaped you, the challenges you've faced, the victories you've celebrated—these create a lens through which you see the world that's uniquely yours.
Your cultural background. The traditions, values, and worldview you inherited or chose. The way your family tells stories. The holidays you celebrate, the foods that comfort you, the music that moves you.
Your personality quirks. Are you naturally optimistic or skeptical? Do you notice details others miss, or do you see the big picture? Do you use humor to cope with difficulty? Are you drawn to conflict or do you seek harmony?
Your passions and interests. The things that light you up create natural authenticity in your writing. If you're fascinated by astronomy, that wonder will seep into your prose. If you're passionate about justice, it will show up in your character arcs.
Your struggles and growth. The challenges you've worked through, the therapy insights you've gained, the ways you've learned to love yourself and others—these create depth and authenticity that can't be faked.
For me, writing clean fiction isn't a restriction—it's a reflection of who I am and what I value. My AuDHD doesn't make me a scattered writer; it makes me a writer who can weave multiple storylines together in ways that surprise readers. My faith doesn't limit my creativity; it expands it by grounding my stories in hope.
Why Diverse Voices Matter More Than Ever
Publishing is finally starting to acknowledge what readers have known all along: we're hungry for stories from perspectives we haven't heard before.
But diversity in publishing isn't just about representation (though that matters immensely). It's about the richness that comes when storytelling reflects the full spectrum of human experience.
When I write a character navigating microaggressions at work, I'm drawing from lived experience that can't be researched or imagined. When I craft dialogue for a Black family gathering, I'm pulling from a lifetime of knowing how we talk to each other when we think nobody else is listening. When I create characters who find strength in their faith without being perfect saints, I'm reflecting a complexity that many Christian fiction books miss.
These aren't "niche" perspectives—they're human perspectives that have been underrepresented.
The publishing industry needs your voice specifically because no one else can tell the stories you can tell. Your background, your struggles, your victories, your way of seeing the world—these create stories that can't be replicated by anyone else.
This doesn't mean you can only write characters exactly like yourself. It means that every character you create, every story you tell, will be filtered through your unique perspective in ways that make it distinctly yours.
Practical Exercises for Voice Development
Exercise 1: The Dinner Table Test Write a scene where your character tells their family about their day. Don't worry about plot—focus on how they speak. Do they use humor? Are they direct or do they circle around the point? What details do they notice? How does their family respond?
This exercise helps you tap into natural dialogue patterns and reveals personality quirks that make characters feel real.
Exercise 2: The Cultural Translation Take a universal experience (first day at a new job, preparing for a big event, dealing with conflict) and write it through your specific cultural lens. What traditions, values, or perspectives would shape how your character experiences this moment?
This helps you see how your background naturally creates authentic, specific details that generic writing misses.
Exercise 3: The Passion Project Write a short scene involving something you genuinely care about—cooking, music, gardening, social justice, faith, sports, whatever lights you up. Don't make it the main plot; just let it be present in the background.
When you write about things you're passionate about, your authentic voice emerges naturally.
Exercise 4: The Eavesdrop Exercise Write down snippets of conversations you hear (with privacy respected, of course). Notice speech patterns, the rhythm of dialogue, and how people really talk versus how dialogue often sounds in books. Then practice writing dialogue that captures that natural flow.
Working in a coworking space has been invaluable for this—being around people from completely different backgrounds working on vastly different projects (versus being surrounded by colleagues who all work for the same company) exposes me to a much wider range of conversation styles, industry jargon, and natural speech patterns than I'd encounter otherwise.
Exercise 5: The Belief System Reveal Write a scene where your character faces a moral choice. Don't make it obvious or preachy—just let their values guide their decision. Notice what values naturally emerge in your writing. These reveal core aspects of your voice.
Trust Your Instincts
The biggest breakthrough in my writing came when I stopped trying to sound like other authors and started trusting that my perspective had value.
Yes, I study craft. Yes, I read widely and learn from writers whose work I admire. But I no longer try to replicate their voices. Instead, I let their excellence inspire me to develop my own.
Your voice might be quiet and contemplative or bold and brassy. It might be humor-forward or deeply earnest. It might be lyrical or conversational, complex or beautifully simple. None of these approaches is better than the others—they're just different.
The key is authenticity. When you stop performing and start being, your true voice emerges.
What I've Learned About Voice
After years of writing, here's what I know for sure about finding your unique voice: It's not about being different for the sake of being different—it's about being authentic to who you are. It's not about having the most dramatic backstory—it's about bringing honesty to whatever your story is. It's not about writing only what you know—it's about bringing your way of seeing to whatever you write. And it's not about perfection—it's about connection.
Your voice is the bridge between your heart and your reader's heart. When you trust it, magic happens.
The publishing world doesn't need another author trying to sound like someone else. It needs the author that only you can be.
So stop hiding behind borrowed phrases and secondhand perspectives. Stop apologizing for the experiences that shaped you. Stop believing the lie that your voice doesn't matter.
It does. More than you know.
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