Finding Your Voice
The goal of any writing
Recently I wrote a piece that, frankly, I thought either wasn’t great or was too personal. Because of my uncertainty I held off on publishing it for a few days longer than I usually do. But then I decided what the hell and hit publish.
And it took off, getting more views more rapidly than anything I’d written to date. What happened?
When I read the comments I realized that I had struck a chord and it was the personal nature of the writing that people related to. Nearly every commenter seemed to feel that we were having a meaningful conversation, which was my intent, but also the reason I held back.
I found my voice
When you’ve written as long as I have it is possible to lose perspective. Much of the writing I have done in recent years needed to conform to SEO best practices, a client’s preferred tone, etc. Unfortunately, this tends to iron out any personality in this marketing content. Just referring to it as ‘content’ is impersonal.
In hindsight, I think this is a fundamental error driven by the need for businesses to conform to the standards of other businesses. The result is a sea of bland words, a sea I contributed to in order to make money and please my clients. When I look back at this it seems so obvious.
