Have you ever wondered what it means to be your authentic self?
What is authenticity?
When we talk about authentic Chinese cuisine, it’s quite clear what we mean. We refer to real Chinese food you can eat in China. It’s genuinely Chinese, not a mishmash of food adapted to Western taste buds.
Similarly, authentic antique is genuine, not fake.
But what does it mean to write in an authentic, genuine voice, true to yourself?
Is it a trick question?
What if you liberate yourself from your search for authenticity?
Could you find a voice resonating strongly with your audience because you focus on your readers instead of yourself?
Let’s explore …
The myth of your authentic voice
Imagine meeting the Queen on her 90th birthday.
What would you say? What would your voice be like?
Now, imagine phoning your 18-year old nephew. He has obtained his driving license and his mother has promised to buy him a car. What would you say? What would your voice be like?
Depending on our audience and the situation, we choose to perform different roles.
Each of us has myriad roles that often conflict, and there is no norm that can tell us how to navigate them.
~ Michael Puett
For instance, when I was a manager, I could be a compassionate boss empathizing with an employee’s challenges and helping him perform better. But I also learned to dial up a colder, more analytical side—to think from the company’s perspective rather than step into the employee’s shoes.
When firing people, I had to take on a different role than in a team meeting.
We often think of our writing voice as innate, as fixed, as something that will reveal itself to us when we dig deep enough, when we look inside ourselves.
But what if we thought of our voice as more fluid? What if we had different voices that we could try out?
Think about it like this:
The most influential voice is the voice resonating with its audience.
Instead of a self-centered search for your innate voice, you can turn to your audience, start conversations, and develop your writing voice in interaction, over time.
Our voice isn’t given
I used to think I was a workaholic.
That’s what I’d been all my working life.
But workaholism and perfectionism were patterns I had fallen into. They were choices I made. Perhaps not consciously, but still … I could have made a different choice.
When I found myself struggling to recover from an injury from a car crash, I had to change my workaholic self because I couldn’t cope with stress. I changed how I work, and how I react to people. I mellowed and relaxed. I turned from a Pyrenees-conquering cyclist into a meditating, yoga-practicing wimp (as the old Henneke would say).
And you might think these are different actions or behaviors, but they change how I am, how I listen, how I talk, and how I write, too. I’ve become less judgemental and kinder—to others and to myself. Rather than chasing success and money, I’ve learned to appreciate the small moments in life.
When we define our voice as a fixed asset, then we limit our opportunity to explore, to grow, to experiment.
The book The Path: A New Way to Think About Everything by Michael Puett inspired this blog post. It’s a refreshing antidote to our quest for authenticity and the me-me-me social media culture:
[We] have to let go of the mentality of the “true self.” Be sincere. Be authentic. Be true to who you are. These slogans of the modern age encourage us to look within. (…) The danger is that what we discover is only a snapshot of who we are at a particular time and place. We read self-help books, meditate, write in our journals, and then diagnose and label ourselves: I’m a free spirit. I’m a hothead. I’m a dreamer. I fear intimacy. I moved around too much as a child, and now I’m skittish when meeting new people. (…) By embracing these patterns, we allow them to harden.
Puett notes that a Confucian approach to changing ourselves is to note our patterns in interactions and then work to shift them. Change starts in small ways. In everyday life.
Your writing voice can change, too. You can play and experiment.
Want to find a voice that resonates with your audience?
When you stop searching for your innate voice, then you can focus on your audience instead:
1. Practice empathy
When we practice empathy and connect with our audience, our voice becomes stronger because we discover what resonates and what doesn’t.
2. Allow ideas to germinate
You can have a detailed editorial calendar and plan how you’ll monetize your blog before you start. It’s a common and valid strategy.
But you can also start a journey. Connect with your audience and discover where it leads to. Over time, your ideas and your voice become stronger.
3. Improve your communication skills
When I started my blog, I didn’t see myself as a creative writer.
Instead of searching for my voice, I tried to learn what good writing was, and that’s how I found a voice. The basic requirements of good writing are:
Once you’ve covered the basics, you’re ready to start experimenting. Learn how word choice, rhythm and punctuation define your voice. Start telling stories and use metaphors to make your writing more personal.
The best way to find your voice is to write more
Writing brings clarity, deepens our understanding, strengthens our ideas.
When we follow our curiosity and write from the heart, we discover our passions, the ideas we care about. These ideas aren’t waiting for us inside us. We find them while writing, experimenting, and interacting.
So, focus on writing well first.
Then play with your words.
Recommended reading on finding your voice:
How word choice shapes your voice
How to make your words swing and swirl
How punctuation shapes your voice
captivating!
I bet you could guess what brought me to enchantingmarketing (you) in the first place – it was my quest to improve my writing generally. And that click, I can proudly say, has been a blessing.
Henneke ma’am, you’re a miracle.
Keith Harrel in his book “attitude is everything” said “we are formed by many hands and hearts…”
you might not have touched me with your hand(literally), but you’re sure taking part in the formation of me and a lot others. and for that alone, God will keep blessing you. #keep_soaring
What a lovely comment, Cynthia. Thank you for stopping by to share your thoughts! You’ve brightened my day 🙂
you’re always welcome, Henneke ma’am. there will always be sunshine in your life. #you’re_radiating
I really appreciate this article as I’ve shed a lot of the baloney from the online world and blogging in general. Once I realized and stopped kidding myself about having an online business with my blog, my voice found its own natural rhythm without worrying about how much money would this post make or how many shares it would get.
I am glad you found your voice, Peggy. I never think about how much money a post might make; I only think about how it may help my readers. And that has helped me built my business.
Happy writing!
You are so sweet, Henneke, and your care for your readers shines through! I’m taking that virtual hug now. Thank you! 🙂
Fantastic advice, Henneke! Having a health crisis certainly drills down to what’s truly important. The past year and a half forced me to slow way down, as I was going through chemo, and could not tolerate stress– same as you. I now weed out the silly stuff.
A book I’m reading right now, “The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People” by Stephen R. Covey, goes into detail about how we can change our patterns of behavior. Two are to “be proactive” and “put first things first.” In writing out a personal and/or business mission statement, we can clarify our goals in life and business. If being the very best writer we can possibly be is part of that mission statement, then we will take steps necessary to improve.
Love your writing! 🙂
I’m sorry to hear about your chemo, Penelope. It sounds like you’ve had to deal with a lot of challenges in the last few years. I’m sending you a virtual hug!
I think it’s quite hard to clarify our goals in life and business and to stay true to our own values. I’ve been running my own business now for about three and a half years, and my goals and values only seem to become reasonably clear now.
I appreciate you’ve stopped by again. Thank you.
Thank you Henneke , this is really an inspiration, to write more and then play with the words.
Another truly excellent, useful post.
Thank you, Terry!
Hey Henneke,
I was just thinking about this the other day while I was practicing piano.
I can relate this to having a song in your head and bringing it out on the piano. But first it’s good to know the rules of music in order that it sounds like the song.
It takes practice and knowledge of the chord structure to put it all together. But once you have it down you can make the song your own.
This is how I look at writing. Learning the rules and practicing will help you to connect with your audience a lot better.
Thanks for sharing!
Yep, that’s a great way to explain it. Understand the rules, practice, and then make it your own.
I like it! 🙂
Thank you, Sherman.
Hi Henneke,
Excellent post here.
Your writing style and voice always amazes me. And I know that comes from years of practicing and especially the editing process (I think).
I agree with @Kitty regarding a voice is already there. Truthfully I had no voice wheen I first started. My writing was as plain as tapioca pudding until I starTed to practice more. And eventually it got better.
“Instead of searching for my voice, I tried to learn what good writing was, and that’s how I found a voice”
I think that’s truly the smart way to go. When you figure out what good writing is, you can then cater your writing to that style and your voice will adapt and become much stronger.
Thanks for this write up here.
– Andrew
Yes, you’re right – it’s the editing process that strengthens my voice. My first drafts can be quite unwieldy (but they’re not as bad as they used to be!)
Thank you for stopping by again, Andrew!
Henneke, love your approach to teaching empathy for writing.
Instead of starting your argument from a typical copywriting POV (“speak to your audience, not about yourself, yada yada”), you use a popular, cultural belief (“you need to find your own voice”) in your counterargument. So instead taking a rote approach to this, you took a psychological one.
Brilliant and unique. That’s all.
Thanks for your magnetic content. You’ve enriched my morning ritual.
I’m a bit tired of the typical copywriting advice, so I’d like to look around the fringes of copywriting to see what I can discover. The book The Path was inspirational.
Thank you for your lovely comment, Jeremy. I appreciate it!
You bet! And yeah, the typical copywriting advice is outmoded. The more invention in this space, the better.
A friendly post. But I beg to differ. A voice does not need to be developed, it is there. Practice will bring it out only more.
I think there is a lot of confusion about the terminology.
You have personal style – and tone of voice – and differing roles. Underneath it all is your private, quirky way of thinking, which will shape any text.
Writers who write in different styles in different genres – like Margaret Lindholm does when she writes as herself or as Robin Hobb – are still discernible for those who know them.
Yes, the terminology is confusing, and nobody seems to agree. Also, different viewpoints seem to exist in fiction vs business writing. In business writing, voice is often used to refer to a mix of what you say (ideas) and how you say it (writing style). In fiction, voice feels closer to personal or writing style. I’ve also found that some people use tone of voice as a synonym for brand voice.
I don’t think we differ that much in our approach. Like you, I suggest you need to practice more (and understand what good writing is), and your voice will appear. In other words, your voice will not appear by searching for it, but by practicing to write better.
#2 is so important to focus on when the rest of the blogging/online business world is telling you to plan, hustle, plan, hustle, plan more, and hustle even more.
Also, your final point about writing more is incredibly important. You won’t know what writing styles or topics will resonate most with your audience if you don’t even write them. I’m learning this the hard way right now. 🙂
I found that the planning approach doesn’t work for me. If I try to plan too much, then I get stuck because I don’t know all the answers. So, I’ve found it’s better to know which direction I want to head into, and then just take the first step. It’s partly rational, partly intuitive, and it works for me 🙂
And if you mean blogger outreach with hustling, then I hate that, too. I prefer focusing on writing!
You haven’t stopped writing, have you?
I have on my blog, for almost a year now. Lots of reasons for that I will actually explain in my first post back. 🙂
Love your post, Henneke. Authenticity is flexible and responsive to what the moment needs from us, as citizens and communicators. I really like your encouragement to write – and to discover how to write well…and in this process we find our voice. This is my experience too, thank you for articulating that.
I like how you put that, Fiona: “Authenticity is flexible and responsive to what the moment needs from us” When you think about it like this, it sounds quite straightforward, doesn’t it? Yet, we all are being told so often to search for the truth within …
Thank you for stopping by again! I appreciate it.
Great post, Henneke! As always! I’m reminded again that our true authentic self does have many different facets. We are not one-dimensional creatures. Thinking this way is a refreshing way to approach our writing each day. Thanks!
Yes, so true. We’re not one-dimensional – in a way it’s obvious, yet we tend to get stuck in certain patterns. We’re complicated creatures, aren’t we? 😉
Hi Henneke, What a wonderful closing summary – Have Substance and Clarity; avoid Wordiness and Weak Words. Finding my voice has always bothered me, but I strive to see in my mind the people I am writing for, as if in a conversation. And thank you for explaining we have several voices; you always bring fresh light onto writers’ problems.
You definitely have the best insight of all writer bloggers. Thank you.
Paul, Sydney Australia
I think that’s an excellent tactic – trying to picture the people you’re writing for in your mind. That helps so much with writing in a more engaging style and spotting where we perhaps use the words our readers don’t really understand or where we might be confusing them with too many different trains of thought. I like leaving my draft text for at least 24 hours, then step into the shoes of one of my readers and try to find out what they think of the draft.
Happy writing, Paul! Thank you for stopping by again.
Great post. I’ve just read (and loved) the book, The Path, which has made me re-think everything so it’s great to read your take on how it could actually be applied. Thank you for sharing.
It’s a great book, isn’t it? There’s still many ideas in it that I haven’t fully processed yet. I think I’m going to re-read it soon!
Hi Henneke,
Thanks for sharing a bit of your story in this post. I had to unlearn many of the things from my business background much like yourself.
One has to learn to wear many different hats.
Developing empathy and compassion has been a life changer for me in the past few years, and really allowed me to feel my emotions, and start to want to share them in my writing. Even though it may seem a bit risky.
Continued success to you in your work.
Continued success to you.
Yes, sharing emotions (and what we really think) is scary, isn’t it? I’ve found it really hard, too, and have had a few sleepless nights during my blogging journey, being afraid to press publish.
Thank you for stopping by, Ray. Happy blogging!
Henneke,
for me, you truly found your voice!. I had subscribed to a few “newsletters” and emails over the past 8 months, and you are the only one I still “allow”. I LOVE your message, I LOVE your words and your content and even though at this point I am not “in the market” of writing copy, I know I will in a few months and every little bite you share, I take it in. Thank you so much for, apparently, who you became 🙂 – Many blessings from San Diego
What a lovely comment, Cornelia. Thank you.
I feel honored you’re allowing my emails in your inbox. 🙂
Hi, Henneke!
You are SO right!
As a writer, I often also read advice to strengthen my voice by reading. Read, read, read, they say. My money is on writing, though. 🙂
As a writer for busy moms, I know I must keep my writing below the academic level I learned. A woman with spilled cereal on the floor and a crying babe on her hip has NO time for 40-word sentences and 4-syllable words! I keep telling myself.
Writers write.
Good writers write something useful, appreciable, and true.
Yes, I like that: “writing something useful, appreciable, and true.” Authenticity does go with honesty (which doesn’t mean we need to reveal everything.)
I think most of us (not just busy mothers) appreciate a writing style that’s easy to read – especially online.
Hi Henneke. I always appreciate your thought-provoking pieces and I absolutely agree with you, that to truly find your voice you need to write more. But, until we are confident in our voice, maybe we (me, other people. Certainly not you), should stop writing so much online, which is ego driven, and start focusing on perfecting the craft of writing off-line until we have something of value to add.
Cheers, Mel
I wasn’t really confident in my voice and my writing when I started blogging; and occasionally I’m still full of self-doubt. I’m not sure there’s ever a point where that doubt goes away as creative works keeps pushing us outside our comfort zone.
Have you read Austin Kleon’s book “Show Your Work”? He very much advocates publishing our work and interacting with people, even if we don’t feel ready for it yet. It’s an interesting take on creative work and promoting ourselves on the web.
Henneke, thanks for sharing your story. I see so much of myself in your work experiences. I had been so dismally unhappy until I finally (and with dramatic flair), 😉 walked out the door and into this freelancing life. I made a choice. The right one for me.
I think those life experiences guide my voice but my ears go along for the ride. I intensely believe there is no wrong or right way. Just different. And if we would open our hearts and stop and listen, we may be surprised what our voice has to say.
Love this statement of yours, Henneke. The most influential voice is the voice resonating with its audience. I guess yours resonated (again) for me today. Thank you.
I love how you put that, Cathy: “if we would open our hearts and stop and listen, we may be surprised what our voice has to say.” This is exactly what I’m learning to do, too.
I appreciate you’re stopping by – as always. Thank you.
@Sue-Ann
I’d say your voice *is your personality, and your personality is your voice. But as Henneke says, we all adapt our personality, or use different parts of it, in different situations.
Back in the long-ago when I was a (very minor) academic I used to play a game with myself seeing just how much academic-ese I could squeeze into a course proposal. It was scary how easy it was to write such bilge, reams of it. (Even scarier was that none of my colleagues or external evaluators seemed to notice what game I was playing!)
The lesson learned was that we can too lazily find ourselves trapped in just one kind of writing voice, which ( like academic-ese) may not even be a good one to start with. We’ve all met, I guess, people who can’t/don’t adapt their speaking voice to fit a particular situation; Queen Victoria famously complained that one of her senior ministers “addresses me as though I were a public meeting”. The point Henneke is making, I think, is that we should give up the idea of ‘finding your voice’ in favour of identifying a number of voices, all of them still our own, that we can consciously select from to suit the mind of writing (or speaking, for that matter) we’re engaged in. For a very brief example, being a grammar nut, in the previous sentence instead of ‘that we can consciously select from’ I could have written ‘from which we can consciously select’ but that would, to me, have seemed too formal and stilted for this context.
My issue is that I find my lazy style is the formal one. I have to consciously avoid it where I can. (My grammar-nut instinct was to write ‘ I have consciously to avoid it’ for example, but since most people don’t care about, or even recognise, a split infinitive I try to remember to force myself to be more colloquial.) And I can tend to write sentences with multiple subordinate clauses, each sentence making a longish paragraph all on its own. None of this makes for easy reading.
In my case, finding my voice was actually a step towards changing it, or trying to. Which is another point: your natural voice may not be the one you should be nurturing. So I find Henneke’s argument about finding multiple voices very useful and persuasive.
I find that our writing voice doesn’t usually appear when writing a first draft. I have to edit my writing to make it sound more natural, too. All the weak phrases sneak into my first draft, so I have to delete them. This is why I think we should focus on good writing rather than on discovering our authentic voice because when we learn to write (edit!) well, then our voice will appear as if by magic.
A lot of people have been taught to write in an academic, rather convoluted style. It takes time and energy to unlearn that and write in a more engaging way.
Great post! I’ve been saying this for ages but in a different way. Your readers won’t be able to identify your “authentic voice.”
More than once, I’ve had this come up when writing sales letters for clients. Sometimes they’ll give me a few sentences or paragraphs they’ve written and used elsewhere. They’ll say, “Please be sure to include these.”
And when I do, they say, “Where did that come from? I’d never say that.”
Haha! That’s so funny. They ask you to include a few sentences and then tell you they’d never say that…
Clients can be great, eh? 😉
“But you can also start a journey. Connect with your audience and discover where it leads to.”
This requires some interaction with your audience. A bit like a conversation, some give and take. Do you have any recommendations for how to get the interaction going, especially when your audience is still small?
Thanks, Henneke 🙂
When my audience was small, I twice offered free web reviews / coaching calls to a limited number of people. I sent out an email and said the first 5 (or 10) people to reply would get a free call. This really helped me understand better how I could help people. After the free web review discussions, I wrote my book How to Write Seductive Web Copy – I had a much better idea what people needed.
In my experience, quality of interactions is often more important than quantity. I’d rather do five Skype calls than a web survey with hundreds of people.
Also, if your audience hangs out in a forum, this can be a great place to pay attention to the questions people ask and the issues they bring up.
Fantastic article! I love how you always put a new spin on things and challenge conventional thinking. Makes me really think…as well as add to my reading list!?
BTW, love the sharing of the “old Henneke”. I so love how honest you are in your posts.
The only reason I am able to even begin to picture the old Henneke is it feels like a similar path to me…different mediums (sport versus corporate), similar experience.
Have a great day!
I think you’ll love that book. It also contains interesting thoughts about decision making with the heart & the mind. Lots of ideas to think about. (I haven’t processed them all yet!) It’s fascinating how much we can still learn from the old Chinese sages.
I love Eastern philosophy. I’ve read a fair amount as it relates to sport, but thanks for opening up a whole new world!
Which book would you recommend next for my reading list?
One of the classic books that blended eastern philosophy with western sport psychology was Thinking Body, Dancing Mind by Chungliang Al Huang and Jerry Lynch.
Great! I look forward to reading it. Thank you 🙂
Beautifully written post Henneke. I’ve been recommending you to some contacts who want to learn more about writing for the web.
Thank you for recommending me to your contacts, Jono. I appreciate it!
Henneke:
I love your thoughts here. I think I am starting to figure it out, a little, and just trying to write well has taken 1st place in my writing mindset as I go.
Two things though: First, I think I can strip my voice out pretty well and get down to writing clear cut business purpose when forced to…like to ghostwrite. But second, I feel like my writing, generally, is improving but my voice (which I am not trying to enact as a part of that just write as best as possible mindset) keeps showing up, I really think. Now, I’m considering….hmmmm…maybe it’s not so much my voice as my personality? Idk. What do you think, my friend? I can’t quite seem to turn it off when I’m writing as myself…hmmm
Well, I hope the sun shines soon for you over there! It may get to be boating season by the weekend around here…fingers-crossed! Sue-Ann
The sun is shining again today!
I’d say personality and voice are closely related and it’s not easy to distinguish the one from the other. If you’re writing as yourself, it’s good when your personality shines through. Why try to strip it out? It’s good when people can connect with you and your voice.
Hi, Henneke,
Inspiring, as always! I would say when meeting the queen or a nephew or anybody, it’s about being human. And that’s humanity or authenticity. Of course, you can also communicate from a position or a role, but that’s AI (soon to be handed over to robots)!
Your post also made me wonder how your accident and its consequences have changed your writing?
All the best,
Peter
Yes, you’re right – it’s about being human.
It’s difficult to say exactly how my accident has changed my writing as my voice was (and is) still evolving anyway. But I’ve become less focused on success and how to make money, and more on creativity, personal style and enjoying life as it is. In terms of writing style, it feels like my writing flows a little more, it’s a little more subtle.
Subtle yes, but how it shines through 🙂 Thank you for sharing!
What I would like to know is, where can I go to find stories online, that are in “categories” so that if I am writing about XXX, I can find stories about XXX. Any suggestions?
Just google short stories in the category or theme you are writing. Google is amazing research tool for specific research when you need it.
Thanks Jane. I’ve tried “stories” plus the topic but maybe “short” will do the trick.
Yes Claire, you need to be real specific in google. Its just ordering something at a cafe where they make it for your taste buds 🙂
Thank you for mentioning that, Jane. I wouldn’t have thought of it!
Your welcome 🙂 Google is my best friend when it comes to wanting to know something.