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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29234
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29234
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

It should sound very far away from your internal voice. Your internal voice is the voice you use to talk to yourself and it has all kinds of advantages that your public voice cannot share, since you know yourself better, and have a complete stock of shared experiences with yourself, that no member of the public can ever share with you.

The art of learning to write is not the development of your internal voice, but the development of your public voice. Our first poor stumbling efforts to express ourselves are simply our internal voice coming out. Listen to a three year old talk, and you will realize that they lack any sense that the experience of the person they are talking to is any different from their own. One of the greatest breakthrough in the development of our language ability is when we recognize that grandpa was not there when I saw the ducks at the park and so I have to tell him about it so he will know what it was like.

Your development as a writer is a matter of refining your public voice, the voice in which you can communicate effectively to people who were not there, who did not see what you saw, did not feel what you felt. This must necessarily be very far from your internal voice, the voice in which you remind yourself what it was like and what you felt and what you imagined.

When we say that a writer has found their voice, therefore, we do not mean (or at any rate should not mean, if we understand the process) that they have found their inner voice, but that they have found their public voice, the voice in which the public can hear them loud and clear.

I don't know if you have made the full journey from private voice to public voice yet, but you should understand that the development of an effective public voice is essential to your success as a writer. The last thing you should do is to try to return to you inner voice. Rather, strive to perfect an effective public voice.

Original score: 8