Here's something nobody told me when I started writing: I spent two years trying to sound like Toni Morrison before realizing I naturally tell stories more like a nervous tour guide who's really excited about this one particular haunted house. And you know what? That worked better. Way better.

Most writing advice nudges you toward some polished, "proper" voice—as if there's a factory setting for good storytelling. But the writers who stay with us, the ones we reread and quote and press into friends' hands, they don't sound like anyone else. They sound like themselves. The trick isn't finding a better voice. It's recognizing the one you already have and turning up the volume.

Your storytelling voice didn't come from nowhere. It's a messy, beautiful collision of everything you've ever read, heard, watched, and lived through. The bedtime stories your grandmother told. The sitcoms you binged as a teenager. That one history teacher who made the fall of Rome sound like neighborhood gossip. All of it left fingerprints on the way you naturally arrange words.

Try this: write a quick retelling of a fairy tale—Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, whatever grabs you—without thinking about it too hard. Just tell it the way you'd tell it to a friend over coffee. Now read it back. Notice what you added. Did you crack a joke? Zero in on an emotional beat? Skip ahead to the action? That's your voice DNA showing itself. Those instincts aren't random. They're your storytelling signature emerging before your inner critic can shut it down.

The goal isn't to trace your influences so you can erase them. It's to see the pattern they've created together. No one else consumed the exact same combination of stories you did, in the same order, filtered through the same life. Your voice is already a one-of-a-kind blend. You just need to stop diluting it with what you think you should sound like.

Takeaway

Your voice isn't something you build from scratch—it's already assembled from a lifetime of influences. The work isn't invention; it's excavation.

Here's a practical exercise that might surprise you. Go pull up five or six pieces of your writing that you actually like. Not the ones your teacher praised or the ones that got the most clicks—the ones that felt good to write, the ones where you thought, yeah, that's what I meant. Now lay them side by side and look for the repeats.

Maybe you always open with a question. Maybe your paragraphs tend to be short and punchy. Maybe you gravitate toward metaphors drawn from cooking, or sports, or nature. Maybe your characters always have a moment of quiet stubbornness. These aren't habits to break. They're consistency markers—the recurring patterns that reveal what your voice does when it's working at full strength. Think of them like the brushstrokes that make a Monet a Monet, even before you see the signature.

Once you've identified three or four of these markers, you've got something incredibly useful: a compass. Next time you're stuck in a draft and the writing feels flat or forced, check whether you've drifted away from your markers. Often the fix isn't writing better—it's writing more like yourself. Your strongest work already contains the blueprint for all your future strongest work.

Takeaway

Your best writing already contains a repeating pattern. Find it, name it, and use it as your compass when drafts feel lost.

Let me guess: somewhere along the way, someone told you to stop doing the thing that makes your writing yours. Too many sentence fragments. Too conversational. Too dark. Too funny for something serious. Too serious for something funny. You absorbed that feedback like a good student, and a little piece of your voice went quiet.

Time to invite it back. The qualities that make readers pause and think I've never heard it put quite that way are almost always the same qualities that made some well-meaning critic uncomfortable. David Sedaris is "too" self-deprecating. Ursula K. Le Guin was "too" philosophical for genre fiction. Terry Pratchett was "too" funny to be taken seriously—until everyone took him very seriously indeed. Their supposed flaws became their signatures.

So write yourself a permission slip. Literally, if it helps. I give myself permission to use humor in sad scenes. I give myself permission to write long, winding sentences. I give myself permission to be weird. Stick it above your desk. The things you keep apologizing for in your writing? Those are the things that will make someone fall in love with your stories. Not despite the quirks. Because of them.

Takeaway

The stylistic "flaws" you've been trained to suppress are often the most distinctive and compelling elements of your voice. Stop fixing what isn't broken.

You don't need to go find your voice. It's been here this whole time—in the way you naturally tell a joke, describe a sunset, or explain why a movie made you cry. It's in the patterns of your best work and the quirks you've been taught to hide.

So here's your homework, and it's the best kind: write something this week where you don't try to sound like anyone else. Let every weird instinct stay on the page. Read it back. That voice? That's the one worth keeping.