How to write in your own voice

I’m reading Miranda July’s new novel, All Fours. If you missed her short story collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You, then do some catching up—she has a singular voice. When you read a Miranda July sentence, you know it’s her because no one else sounds like her. So, between achingly sexy chapters, I’ve been thinking about voice.

How can you sound precisely you?

I have a few ideas to share with you. Then, I’ll share my poem “Sellout” and tell you how I came to write it.

1. Throw your phone out the window. Okay, you can put it in a drawer. But I still stand by this—it’s impossible to hear your own voice over the roar of the internet.

2. Talk out loud to yourself. I’ve written in previous newsletters about the benefits of reading your poems out loud, recording audio clips, and playing them back. But now when I say, talk to yourself, I mean pre-poem. Put your thoughts in the air and listen for patterns. Hear anything you like? Write it down. Make a list. Look, there you are.

3. Balance reading and not reading. Maybe the writer gods will smite me for this one. Fine, let me be smitten. I don’t mean to stop reading altogether. And, of course, being an ambitious writer does not mean you can’t read stuff purely for fun; you can and you should. What I mean is—read until you get struck by that wonderful and terrible feeling of I wish I had written that and then put the book down and get to work (you can start by throwing your phone out the window).

My poem, “Sellout” is not an after. But I wrote it after getting struck by that wonderful and terrible feeling when I read this stunning poem “Nomad Palindrome” by Kai Carlson-Wee. Not only did I wish I had written it, but I also felt that I could not have written it, no matter how hard I tried. This got me thinking about voice and style, my voice and my style.

I really did hide my phone and ramble aloud, looking at the skyline.

What do you do to sound more like yourself in your writing? Who inspires you, stops you in your tracks?

Thank you for reading and supporting my work. If you’re wondering what’s up on the other side of the Substack paywall—this week, subscribers are receiving feedback on a poem of theirs, and as usual, I’ve been posting my more unhinged, secret drafts in my Close Friends story on Instagram where Substack subscribers vote on poem edits. It’s fun. You can/should join in.