On Finding the Voice

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I had a conversation recently with someone on finding the voice, the underlying self beneath your sentences. Voice, as they described it, allowed for you to be distinct, and is something we must continuously seek: the rhythm, the cadence, the fingerprint that marks the work as yours. This point, in some ways, stands; you can hear that kind of fingerprint in many of the greats, the invisible confidence that comes from having written enough to stop flinching at your own tone. Honestly, though, I never liked “the voice” as a phrase; the implication of the search for it as an end all be all measure of authenticity. It sounds like there’s one voice inside you, hiding behind a door, waiting to be discovered, when it is really the construction of these little soundboxes, each chamber within you to come out, with purpose or without.

To search for the voice is to treat the self as stable, as if you can know what you mean before you write it down. You can’t. The act of writing is the act of hearing yourself for the first time and realizing how much of it is noise. You write through the imitation, through the bad sentences, through the affectations you picked up from whoever you were reading that month. What people call “finding their voice” is usually the long process of stripping those away until the sentences stop sounding borrowed, and even then, the self you land on might only last a few pages.

Voice is not a possession. It drifts. Some days it’s lean and precise, some days it stumbles. What matters isn’t consistency but recognition: that moment when you read a line back and feel that strange mixture of embarrassment and accuracy. The line sounds too close to you, and that’s how you know it’s right. When I look back on my own work, I can’t say I hear a single, unified sound. I hear fragments, the noise of attempts. A line that feels right one day feels excessive the next. The idea of a consistent voice feels like nostalgia, a wish for coherence that writing doesn’t grant. Each piece demands a slightly different self, and you shape yourself to meet it. Maybe what we call “voice” is just the shape you take when you’re trying to say something you don’t fully understand. To write with any honesty means accepting that your own words will betray you. Your sentences will bend and break and betray you in every conceivable sense after a while. You’ll contradict yourself. You’ll sound unsure. Still, we must continue to write, reaching further forward and into ourselves and allowing these bits and pieces to come out alongside the emotion we drag onto the page. Everyone wants to be proud of their own voice, but pride doesn’t survive the edit. You end up cutting the lines you liked best. You sand down what you thought made you distinct. What remains is what works. The longer I write, the less I believe in the idea of finding your voice, because you cannot find it at all: you must leave it behind, draft after draft, in the wake of what you’re trying to say.

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