Finding Your Voice in Writing: 7 Steps to Outlining Your Distinct Voice
Beginner lessons to set your content career tone right
I recently got an awe inspiring comment on my first lesson I wrote on my website on content writing, which was about doing the inner work, and that commenter had no idea that they were inspiring this next piece. It’s a spiritual successor to that free lesson, I hope will ignite others to find their writing voice – honing in on what makes you unique and distinct.
Let’s just get to it already!
Step 1: Forget Society and Your Parents, What Do You Want?
People have a lot of expectations of others for some unknown reason, your teachers may have had little trouble telling you, you would go nowhere in life. Or you might have parents who expect you to become a successful doctor despite your inability to function on no sleep. Friends might hope you remain useless as you’re the friend they feel they can shine next to.
The first step into a career in writing isn’t learning to train an algorithm, but instead understanding who you are. Beneath the societal bollox, underneath your yearning to please your parents, deep beneath the layers of lies you’ve been telling yourself at 3am when you can’t sleep because you mind wanders to all the failures you’ve incurred in your 30 years on this planet — just me?
Sure, you can’t ever pinpoint the truth of who you are because we’re always changing, some cosmic dance between your true nature and that of this ever expanding space we call home. But you certainly can get a better idea of who you are. It took me a sh*t ton of time, but it’s possible at a fraction.
How to Discover What You Really Want
It’s a lame answer but that’s up to you honestly. Everyone’s got a method, some will have a method they want you to buy — but f*ck that. You got the stuffs inside, you just might need a helping hand to find it again. I’ll do my best to help in that, here’s what I did to find my writing mojo:
Meditation: I’m not saying you need to be a guru or anything. But doing some form of meditation, whether it’s yoga, tai chi, simply sitting to meditate — they can help you begin to listen to that inner voice alongside connect with your body. Which will ultimately make you a better writer anyway as the awareness can inspire drab content.
Probing Questions: Become the detective of who you are, ask yourself questions like, “does writing for this company align with who I am?” or “do I write the way I talk?” or “will my readers genuinely want this or is this my ego having its own fun?”
Talk Therapy: I mean it can’t hurt, getting to know yourself with guidance is probably the best way to understand what you truly want. I know all too well that not everyone can afford it though so here’s some things to learn instead: shadow work, shadow integration, books on psychology, be mindful of when you feel your most authentically yourself and the least.
What Do I Want: what is it you really want from writing? If you want to become a millionaire overnight I can tell you that a shallow goal like that will inevitably lead to a shallow connection with others. But if your goal is to connect with readers, to make them understand themselves a little better, to make them giggle, to be honest — isn’t that a more worthy goal?
Step 2: Forging Your Writers Voice
A glassblower doesn’t just grab that glass blowing stick and wish for it to make a cool piece of glass art (I know nothing about glass blowing as you can tell). But so often us early-days writers want to just be an amazing writer instantaneously. I get it, look I’m impatient af too. I wanted to be retired at this point, age 31.
Things take time, a frustrating amount of time. But there’s also something so worthwhile when your journey is a long road, as you get to strive to do and become better. You don’t realise it but this is the best moment, where you’re developing, learning, and growing. Things might not stick, you may have relatively few people reading your Substack because you refuse to force your family and friends to subscribe, but you show up each day, bring your best you, and see with hopeful eyes what the world offers you — kinda beautiful really.
So I’m going to tell you what you don’t want to hear, that practice is the only way. I’m here after making a successful website, but you don’t see the thousands of articles I wrote to get here. I wrote for an unethical company as my first gig many years ago, where I wrote 7 days a week (one article a day) – not something I recommend to anyone. But it was practice. I wrote and wrote and wrote until I found my true writing voice.
That was just one in many companies, most I wrote for weren’t crooks, but in fact great company’s where I learnt invaluable skills too. But more importantly — I learnt what I don’t want to sound like — that’s everyone else ( ━☞´◔‿ゝ◔`)━☞
Step 3: Writing is You
What I love about writing is you can learn all the technical know-how in the world, have an English degree, be a grammar wizard, be a top performer — and a person like me with none of that will be right there in the same company, freelancing the same clients with you.
I once was brazenly told by a colleague at work that “those writers who just teach themselves are cluttering up the internet with rubbish” as I slowly nodded, pretending like I wasn’t one of those self-taught writers cluttering this here interwebs. He had no idea that I had no degree, that I was self-taught, none of it — he also probably doesn’t know I built my own website or any of this really.
In my opinion, you don’t need to be an English lit major to be a content writer. You just need fairly good grammar (which you can teach yourself *wink*) and you need to understand what readers want and what answers they’re looking for. In my self-taught opinion, two key skills are:
Being true to yourself, no matter what anyone thinks or what grammar says
Being empathic towards your fellow humans
And even then it depends on what kind of career you want to create. Just make it you.
Step 4: Self Taught Content Writing Tips ;)
While I’m sure a degree does actually help if you feel like it, if you’re more the I’m broke and not planning on more debt type I’ve got some tips that I wish beginning Jac had in her career. These would’ve helped a bunch:
➼ Use the active voice more — an example of the active voice is switching out “I used this” to “I use this,” typically removing the -ed words is a quick way to create an active voice. Otherwise Subject, Verb, Object in that order in a sentence makes it active.
➼ Learn everything about SEO, then chuck it out — Search Engine Optimisation is important in helping your readers but also can help your articles rank higher. But don’t get too into it, just see it as a rough outline as you really never know what will and won’t rank.
➼ Don’t copy/ use AI/ or anything like that — the quickest way to kill your tone of voice in writing is to copy other people's work, to use AI to write it for you (a robot copying other writers who did do the work) or anything of that kind.
➼ Create templates — if you loved the way a piece of yours flowed or looked don’t be afraid to create a template in Google Docs for it
➼ Get inspired — inspiration comes from a mirriad of places for me personally. Art, anime, books, learning, you name it really.
Step 5: Brand Tone of Voice
If you’re a website creator too then you might be wondering what your brand tone of voice should be. I can’t tell you as I have no idea what my brand tone is… honest? authentic? Even that sounds cringe. Just learn in detail about yourself, your values as a person, and what your product/ service represents and that’s the closest I can help with brand tone.
Step 6: Exercises for Finding Your Writer’s Voice
If you’re thinking, I still don’t know what my writer’s voice is! Here are some exercises to help guide you towards it:
Write down some common words you use in your everyday speech. Write down how they make you feel too. Ask people you talk to how you make them feel with your words.
Write a stream of consciousness page on absolutely anything that comes to mind. Notice if there’s a pattern in your thinking and what it might be, any recurring words?
Keep a journal for a month about your thoughts and feelings — what are they signaling about you and your life?
Write down your core values, this list by James is comprehensive. Pick five from the list that sum up you as a person and your major beliefs.
How do your words fit in with your values, and what words can you use that fit better?
What are you doing in order to become who you wish to be? What plan can you put in place to get going on those goals?
Step 7: Are You Sure?
It’s not a job for everyone really, you have to love it to an almost mad degree. You need a strange range of interests from extreme solitude, creative writing, advertising, social introvertism, and marketing. You’ll feel like you’re chasing those number highs and slogging through website visitor number lows. It’s also not as glamorous as you think – so I ask are you sure finding your writers voice is what you want?
It requires being vulnerable with yourself and others, connecting online rather in that beautiful 3D world. Do you love it enough to keep persisting when nobody is listening?
If yes, I wish you the best, and if not I still wish you the best. I hope this shed some light on your own light — you’ve got something that nobody else does and it’s something you deserve to share with others. Even if you’ll suck a lot at the beginning, the journey is worth every step the voyage. Wishing you warmth and wellness along the way too, also let me know in the comments your thoughts ♥(ˆ⌣ˆԅ)