Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul.
Interpretation
Your writing reflects your true self and should convey your thoughts and feelings authentically.
This quote emphasizes that a writer's voice is a profound expression of their inner self, going beyond mere stylistic choices or surface-level engagement. It suggests that genuine writing resonates with readers when it authentically conveys the writer's thoughts, emotions, and essence, allowing for a deeper connection between the writer and their audience.
In practice
A motivational speaker might use this quote in a workshop about self-expression through writing.
It's not that he lacked poetry. But his poetry was of the body, not the mind. He spoke it in the way he moved, the way he held a hammer, rowed a boat, built a fire. I, on the other hand, was like a brain in a box, a beating heart in a coal scuttle.
We usually evaluate creative process in terms of how much feeling or thinking was behind the work or how well the work was done. Isn't there any other way of appreciating the process? What if the standard of excellence was how fully present the artist was during the process?
I use poetry to help me work through what I don’t understand, but I show up to each new poem with a backpack full of everywhere else that I’ve been.
Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.
The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the origin to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice.
What comes first? The melody, always. It's all about singing the melodies live in my head. They go in circles. I guess I'm quite conservative and romantic about the power of melodies. I try not to record them on my Dictaphone when I first hear them. If I forget all about it and it pops up later on, then I know it's good enough. I let my subconscious do the editing for me.
Every device there is in language is there to be used, if you will. Poets have got to enjoy themselves sometimes, and the twistings and convolutions of words, the inventions and contrivances, are all part of the joy that is part of the painful, voluntary work.
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