Voice and reading

On the M&B Editors loop, a writer who is just starting out on the journey towards publication (or at least on the early part of the path) said that she did not read romance very much anymore because she was worried about diluting her voice.

The simple answer is reading does not dilute your voice. Your voice is you and is made up of ALL your life experience. It is how you tell a story and those things that are important to you.
There are some writers who never readers, but they are the limited exception rather than the rule. Most writers read and read alot.
I write historical romance because I love the genre. I came to it through my reading. And I dare say that somebody could find echoes of authors in my writing, if they wanted to go fossicking backwards. No writer is an island. But there is also something uniquely me. I simply can not colour within the lines and I can't write like anyone else but me.
Twyla Tharp goes on at some length about this in her book, The Creative Habit. Basically, there are no new ideas under the sun, but it is how those ideas are put together and become an individual's.
Many unformed/inexperienced writers do play around with different styles as they seek to discover their voices. Teenaged writers, mainly because their life experience is limited, are apt to do this. But this is fine as it is good to experiment and to discover what works for your own unique voice and what doesn't. This is why also one of the best things a young writer can do for his or her voice is to live, and to experience the whole range of human emotion. Until you are certain about your own voice, you should not be submitting things for publication. Some people, for a number of reasons, have their voices mature earlier than others. Some voice mature later. Other voices move. The stories people tell in their twenties are not necessarily the same stories they will tell in their fifties.

As a writer, you have to know what makes the story uniquely yours. Why do you want to tell this story? If you had to throw everything about a story, what would be the ONE thing you would keep? What one theme? In other words, what is the story about? What makes it yours?
What makes the characters yours and not some character off the shelf? Why is that hero yours and not someone else's? Hint: it wll come down to inner character/true character, the sorts of things that are only revealed when pressure is applied and choices made rather than physical characteristics.
Knowing what makes a story yours means you can start working with your voice.
Anyway, reading is important for a developing writer. Discovering what works and what doesn't work for your voice. It is possible to admire other writers, while knowing what they do with their voice is something you can never do with yours. Reading can also help give you distance from your own work. And analysing why something works or does not work in someone else's work can help make you more objective in your work. To improve your work, you must be able to examine it and still have it keep its place in your affections.
It is always about trying to make the best possible read for that unique subset of readers -- yours. And they are reading you, because of your voice, not because you are a pale imitation of someone else.

So never be frightened to read. And when you come to something that you love, take the time to anlyse why it speaks to you as a person and as a writer. it is some thing you can use and make your own.Or is it just something, you can admire.

How to destroy your voice

When I was at Biddy's, I came across a book that she had purchased way back when she was just thinking about becoming a romance writer -- The Romance Writer's Phrase Book. Thinking it might be a list of words, I opened it and nearly dropped the book in horror. The book contains phrases, sentences, combination of words that are supposed to help you in your writing if you are writing romance. Anyone want to say -- cliche here? Why would anyone want to use it as it would be guaranteed to make your voice less unique? The writer would be using someone else's image, soeone else's words.

About the only use I can see for this book is using it to avoid cliches. And here I pray to God that I do not inadvertently use the phrases.
A book such as that one will NOT help you cultivate your own unique voice. It will only give you pat cliches that a thousand, nay ten thousand writers and want to be writers have already used. The phrases might not even be appropriate to your characters.
Publishers buy unique voices that tell good stories.They do not voices where they see the same words written over and over again. The same images. It is fairly good way to get rejected -- time and time again. The best thing you have going for you is your unique voice.Do not compromise it by using stupid shortcuts. It will take longer in the end.

I agree that one should should use physical beats and phrases to help give colour to a world. One should use active verbs and interesting words, but they need to be of the writer's own choosing. The phrases and physical beats that you use should come from your characters. How do they think about the world, what phrases might they use. An artist will see things differently than a Viking. A warrior differently than a nun. What life experiences colour their thinking? Choose words that give your character voices and colour. Make sure you choose different words for different characters. It helps you to create distinct personalities. Men use different language than women. Doctors speak differently than plumbers.

Your voice includes the words you choose, and the order in which you put therm together. As well as the subject matter and the theme. You destroy your voice when you start copying or adding phrases from other writers. End of story.

All your writing needs to come from within.

The building blocks for a writer are WORDS not phrases. Your words, not someone else's. You need to trust your deamon.

Okay, but how do you develop your literary skills?

First you read around the genre. Deconstrucct and look at how things are done. Self Editting for Fiction Writers is brilliant at explaining the nuts and bolts of showing not telling, interior monologue and physical beats.

When you are writing a first draft, accept that you will have a lot of telling.
In subsequent drafts, learn to look out for the telling. For example She sat down on the couch. It is not very exciting, but it gets the point across and you can go on with the story.later when you are revising, you look out for such sentences and try to make them more interesting and containing more. Ino therwrds, you make them work harder.
For example, She sank down in the soft enveloping cushions of the sofa, holding a hand out to him.
Or She perched on the edge of the couch, hands folded neatly in her lap, eyes bright and alert, watching every movement Rex made.
Sometimes even she felt unhappy or she felt happy will give you enough to carry on with getting the first draft done.

It is where your own literary talent comes in.
Cultivate words, not phrases. When you find words you like, make a list. Use a thesaursus. However, do remember to find out the exact meaning of aword. Much merriment and mirth would be saved if wrtiers actaully discovered what lavved means. A good vocabulary is never wasted on a writer. Only you know which words appeal to you. I love the word -- oozed. grin grates. Wink leaves me cold. But I adore elemental, raw, and soothing. Personal preference. Learn your own personal preferance for words. If manroot makes you cringe, don't use it.

As Kate Walker has said on many many occassions -- write like YOU and do not write like anyone else.

I think perhaps I ought to do a few blogs on showing, not tell, and physical beats. Just in case, some writer out there is confused and confuddled by what I mean.