Finding Your Voice

Recently a friend of mine read one of my books for the first time. His comment was that he could hear my voice and my personality coming through, but that this wasn’t a bad thing.
As writers we are often told to “Find your voice”. What does that mean? To me it means that I have a unique way of saying and doing things; I am different and if I try to write like someone else, it will not ring as true as if I write in my own voice and use my own perspective on the world to communicate.
In my first book, Fear Treads the Mountain, I had not found my voice yet. I wrote that book in a style that is similar to a style sometimes used by Mary Higgans Clark. However, she has her voice and I have mine. By the time I got to the second book, I was starting to find my voice and now I’ve fallen into a pattern that is uniquely mine.
That doesn’t mean that I can’t vary my voice a little. In the last book, Bite of the Serpent I did a true who dunnit’ for the first time, even though that book was a sequel to another book I had written called Tempest Rider. In Manifesting Destiny I changed my style a little and as a result varied my voice.
My cousin used to tell me, “Be yourself; that is always perfect”
Although I’m not sure that is always perfect, I think it may be the best way to write something believable. As an actor must be himself being a gunslinger or whatever, so I must be the character I’m writing for that moment in time; however, it’s my version of what that type of character would be like, not your version.
I have found my voice and now I can’t shut up! I just keep on writing.