Attempting to Write like Someone Else

The past few weeks I have really struggled with trying to write like the other writers I see on Associated Content, and my result has been nothing but frustration. Why? It is because they are not me, and it will take me being me to be comfortable and write with confidence. When I go to read something that someone else has written, there is one thing that I want to hear more than anything: voice. A writer's voice is his soul, poured out onto the page, and manifested to inform or to teach, or just to express those things that happen within the mind of the writer. I don't necessarily want to hear merely what a writer has to say. I want to hear the writer say it.

How do our thought processes affect our writing?

Our brains are like computers. Fancy, irreplaceable computers, but computers they none-the-less are. They process information along pathways and applications that the user has implemented and used over the years, and they do so efficiently. They process information instantaneously, on the spot, and in ways that have been developed over your entire lifetime.

To use someone else's computer to process the data that enters your machine is therefore counter-productive. You wouldn't take the data in a database on your Mac and remotely access a PC to run the figures when you can do it just as well where you are; that would be silly. Doing so would take much more time that necessary, and the computations would not make sense on your native platform. The amount of work it would take to run those processes on someone else's machine would be more trouble than it's worth.

And so it is with writing. Attempting to articulate the processes that take place in your head and replicate them as though they were initiated by someone else's head simply doesn't make sense. The voice is unnatural because it doesn't belong to you, or to me, or to whomever else is pointlessly trying to pose as someone else by pass their work off as having a different voice.

What if I want to write like her?

Consider for a moment those people whose writing have influenced you, or have challenged you. What made it stand out? What did it say that impressed you?

I dare say that it might not have been just their style that caught you, but the fact that you heard a person speaking to you, and their truth and vulnerability allowed you to see the person and to trust what it was that they had to say to you. Writing that comes out of a whole person is much more effective than that of someone who is not confident enough to speak truthfully and with authority.

How does this affect my growth as a writer?

Don't let it. Improving the performance of your machine by adding to it, reorganizing your data, or upgrading to the newest software (to use the computer analogy) is always good, as long it remains you who is writing. Don't use your voice as an excuse for stagnating in your writing skill. Push yourself, try new things, but make sure that it is always you writing and trying new things, and not you trying to emulate someone else.

Most of all, be confident. There is little worse than reading something from someone who really gives off an air of ignorance or weakness. If you are writing, and someone is reading, you have the authority. Assume control, and take your reader on a tour through your brain, showing them the relevant highlights and backing them up with research. Let yourself shine through, and you will have much more success.