{"id":114,"date":"2015-06-03T10:24:09","date_gmt":"2015-06-03T15:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pmbaxter.com\/?p=114"},"modified":"2018-03-21T10:35:59","modified_gmt":"2018-03-21T15:35:59","slug":"how-to-find-your-own-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pmbaxter.com\/index.php\/2015\/06\/03\/how-to-find-your-own-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"How to find your own voice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not a famous writer guy. But I can share the thing I did that made me like my voice now as much as I&#8217;ve ever liked it.<\/p>\n<p>Ready?<\/p>\n<p>Write.<\/p>\n<p>Write A LOT.<\/p>\n<p>Write even when you don&#8217;t like the voice of what you&#8217;re writing.<\/p>\n<p>By writing a LOT, you&#8217;ll start to pick up what there is about your writing that you don&#8217;t like. Cut those things out. What&#8217;s left is better.<\/p>\n<p>Michelangelo took a block of marble and crested the statue of David by removing everything that didn&#8217;t look like David. You can do the same thing with your writing. If you write enough, you&#8217;ll see glimmers of your own writing that you like. You&#8217;ll see words and phrases you never want to write again. You&#8217;ll get better at recognizing these patterns, and your voice will be stronger.<\/p>\n<p>At least, that was my experience.<\/p>\n<p>You may have heard of morning pages. My writing improved when I started doing those. I&#8217;ve modified the practice since then. These days, I only do one page, and not necessarily in the morning &#8211; but I still do something like them. It helped me start picking out the words and phrases I overused. My first drafts of ANYTHING are cleaner and better now as a result.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.inc.com\/jessica-stillman\/why-it-s-worth-making-time-for-this-lengthy-morning-ritual.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Why It\u2019s Worth Making Time for This Lengthy Morning Ritual &#8211; Jessica Stillman<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/juliacameronlive.com\/basic-tools\/morning-pages\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Morning Pages &#8211; Julia Cameron<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not a famous writer guy. But I can share the thing I did that made me like my voice now as much as I&#8217;ve ever liked it. Ready? Write. Write A LOT. Write even when you don&#8217;t like the voice of what you&#8217;re writing. By writing a LOT, you&#8217;ll start to pick up what &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/pmbaxter.com\/index.php\/2015\/06\/03\/how-to-find-your-own-voice\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;How to find your own voice&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,7],"tags":[13,12],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advice","category-writing","tag-advice","tag-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmbaxter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmbaxter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmbaxter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmbaxter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmbaxter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pmbaxter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":116,"href":"https:\/\/pmbaxter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions\/116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pmbaxter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmbaxter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pmbaxter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}