Write a million words is probably the best advice you can give anyone. It’s exactly right. Our expectation that we can be great writers from the moment we first put pen to paper is kind of crazy. We’d never expect that kind of immediate success if we took up the violin or carpentry.

Thanks for your comment.

What a great story! You wrote from your heart. Thank you for sharing!

I wrote a short novel about meeting my love; romance, fantasy, and philosophy liberally mixed in an odd concoction of broken stories. Suddenly the critics loved me, readers loved me. I assume the success was due to the feelings I portrayed. Suddenly an emotional person rather than an aesthete. I cannot tell, but am glad it happened. I think you are right.

Thanks, Angela, and yes, we’re all in a hurry (myself included). Finding your voice definitely takes time. I took a workshop once where the leader said you have to write a million words of crap before the work starts coming out right. It never occurred to me at the time, but your comment makes me think that at least part of what they meant was related to finding your voice as a writer. You have to write, a lot, before it happens.

You’re welcome! Glad it spoke to you.

Interesting question. It sounds to me like you were on the right track with the suggestion of agency. Maybe these characters are too passive. Maybe there’s too much time being spent in their heads—which yes, can speak to voice, but no one wants to read a story about people sitting around thinking. A helpful way to think about both showing and agency is to imagine the story unfolding on a theatre stage. If all we see are people sitting around and thinking about how sad they are—well, that won’t work on the stage, which means it also won’t work on the page (ugh, unintentional rhyme, but hopefully makes sense). Voice is important, but it only goes so far. Fiction also requires characters with goals and something at stake if they don’t get what they want.

Yes. Voice is a make-or-break element in a novel for sure. And there’s no denying it’s scary to “just be yourself on the page.” It’s risky. But in the end, isn’t that what makes writing so powerful?

Just be yourself on the page is such a great way to look at it.