SeanDareOnline.com

The Announcement

SeanDareOnline.com, among other things, is an outlet for my musings as well as an opportunity to enhance my writing skills. An area I struggle with is finding my “voice”. Just as a persons physical voice is different from another’s so too does one writers words differ from another’s. This subtle change in the way words are constructed on paper is called a writer’s voice.

I have often read about how to find my voice. The advice is the same. To find your voice you must both read and write…a lot. Upon re-reading the interview with Daring Fireball author John Gruber I found a powerful description of how he found, and in turn uses, his voice. Here is an excerpt from that interview:

SHAWN: How has your approach to writing articles on DF changed over years? Have you gotten better at writing something and publishing it or are you more meticulous than you used to be?

JOHN: That’s hard to put into words. Early on, I had to think about my “voice”. I was conscious of my style. Now, not so much — I “just write”, and the style seems to come naturally. Part of that is that you get used to anything over time, but a bigger part is that the style changed slowly over time — I kept tweaking it until I found the perfect pitch, at which point it became something I didn’t have to think about to achieve.Put another way: early on, I had to concentrate both on what I was saying and how was I saying it. Now I just concentrate on what I’m saying.

John says it so well. When he started out he was concentrating both on what he was saying and how he was saying it. Now he just concentrates on what he is saying. I can tell I am getting closer to this goal. How? Easy, I don’t have to revise as much. When I started writing about five years ago I would re-write the same passage three or four times. I would agonize over sentence structure and word usage. It was quite painful and frustrating. Now when I write I find myself reviewing my work saying,”That is pretty good.” I still make some changes, but the overall tone changes very little.

The down side to this discovery is that I have developed my voice for informative writing. Informative writing is like the writing I have done on this blog to date. The writing I need to improve, however, is fiction writing. There I need a lot of practice. To solve that problem I am announcing a new series on this website called Essays. When you see a blog post with the word Essay in the title you will not be reading informative writing, you will be reading fiction. The goal is to use this website as a forum where I can enhance my voice in this area.

What I Need From You

The other part of the equation is you, the readers. I need readers who will tell me honestly what they think of the essays I post. John Gruber says it eloquently in the continuation of the quote above.

I also find it much easier to write now that I have a regular audience. The hardest thing for me starting out at the very beginning was trying to shake the feeling that I was writing something no one would read. It felt like delivering a speech in an empty auditorium.

I need to fill my “auditorium” so to speak. If you like what you read here then tell your friends and neighbors about SeanDareOnline.com. Check back daily for new posts (I am trying to post something everyday). Post your comments and be honest with me about my writing.

- Sean