Finding Your Unique Voice: How Living Your Story Shapes Your Writing
Part 5 of Wilderness & Wisdom: A Master Class with Eowyn Ivey
Live Your Story
Here's what every writing coach will tell you: "Find your voice."
Here's what they won't tell you:
Your voice isn't hiding somewhere waiting to be discovered. It's being forged every day through the life you're actually living.
Eowyn Ivey didn't develop her distinctive voice by studying writing techniques or copying successful authors.
She developed it by living authentically in Alaska for decades, working as a bookseller and newspaper reporter, and allowing her genuine experiences to permeate every sentence.
The result? A writing voice so authentic and distinctive that readers recognize her work within paragraphs.
When critics say "No one writes like Eowyn Ivey," they're not just praising her style—they're recognizing the unmistakable authority that comes from writing what you genuinely know and love.
Why Most Writers Struggle to Develop Writing Voice
Let's address the elephant in the room: "finding your voice" has become one of those mystical writing concepts that sounds profound but feels impossible to achieve.
Most writers approach voice like it's a costume they need to try on.
They read successful authors and attempt to mimic their tone, style, or approach.
But authentic writing voice isn't something you adopt—it's something you uncover by being genuinely yourself on the page.
The writers with the most distinctive voices aren't trying to sound like anyone else.
They're writing so authentically from their own experience and perspective that their voice becomes inevitable.
How Living Your Story Creates Authentic Voice
The Authority of Genuine Experience
Ivey's voice carries the weight of lived experience.
When she describes the sound of wind through Alaskan pines or the particular silence of a snow-covered landscape, she's not researching or imagining—she's remembering.
This first-hand knowledge creates what editors call "authority."
Readers can sense when a writer genuinely knows their subject versus when they're faking it through research alone.
Authority isn't about being an expert—it's about writing from genuine experience rather than secondhand knowledge.
Even if you're writing fantasy or historical fiction, the emotional truths, relationships, and human experiences you draw from should be authentically yours.
The Power of Specific Place
Notice how Ivey's Alaska isn't generic wilderness—it's her Alaska, filtered through her particular experiences and relationships with the landscape.
She worked as a newspaper reporter in Wasilla. She sold books at an independent bookstore in Palmer. She raised daughters in this environment.
These specific experiences create specific details that generic research could never provide.
Your unique voice emerges from your unique relationship with your material.
The coffee shop where you write every morning, the neighborhood where you grew up, the job that taught you about human nature—these specific experiences create the distinctive details that make your voice unmistakably yours.
Embracing Your Background (Even If It Seems Ordinary)
Here's where many writers get stuck: they think their background isn't interesting enough to inform their writing.
Ivey worked at a newspaper before becoming an author.
That might sound mundane, but those years taught her about storytelling, audience connection, and the business side of creative work—all of which inform her approach to her author career.
Every experience you've had has shaped your perspective in ways that can strengthen your writing voice.
Your "boring" office job taught you about workplace dynamics.
Your stint as a server showed you human nature under pressure.
Your experience as a parent revealed depths of love and fear you didn't know existed.
Developing Writing Voice Through Authentic Living
Write What Genuinely Fascinates You
Ivey doesn't write about Alaska because it's marketable—she writes about it because she's genuinely fascinated by the intersection of beauty and danger, isolation and community, that defines life there.
Your strongest writing voice will emerge when you write about subjects that genuinely captivate you, not subjects you think will sell.
What keeps you awake at night thinking?
What do you find yourself researching for fun?
What aspects of human nature puzzle or intrigue you most?
If you’re passionate about it, your readers will be too.
Honor Your Natural Rhythms
Some writers force themselves into daily writing schedules that don't match their natural energy patterns, then wonder why their voice feels stilted.
Ivey's slower publishing schedule suggests someone who takes time to let stories mature rather than rushing to meet arbitrary deadlines. This patience allows her natural voice to emerge without forcing.
Your authentic writing voice will have its own natural rhythm—honor that instead of fighting it.
Maybe you're someone who needs long periods of thinking before writing.
Maybe you write best in intensive bursts.
Maybe you need to write terrible first drafts before finding your voice in revision.
Don’t let the world rush your creativity.
Struggling with feeling rushed? The article “Let Them Rush Your Timeline” was written just for you.
Live Curiously
The most distinctive writing voices belong to writers who remain genuinely curious about the world around them.
Ivey's transition from tech marketing to newspaper reporting to bookselling to novelist shows someone who continues learning and growing throughout her career.
Curiosity feeds authenticity, and authenticity feeds distinctive voice.
Stay interested in new experiences, people different from you, and ideas that challenge your assumptions.
Your writing voice will naturally evolve as you do.
Common Voice Development Mistakes
The Imitation Trap
Trying to write like your favorite authors can be a good exercise, but if you cling to writing styles that are not your own, you will delay the development of your own voice.
Read widely for inspiration, do writing exercises to stretch yourself and learn, but always write from your own experience and perspective.
It’s especially tempting when you're starting out and feeling insecure about your abilities, to read someone like Tana French or Gillian Flynn and think, "If I could just write like that, I'd be successful."
But here's the problem: readers already have Tana French. They don't need a second-rate imitation—they need the first and only you.
Study great writers to understand craft techniques, not to copy their voice.
Learn how they structure scenes, develop character, or build tension. But apply those techniques to your own authentic material and perspective.
The Perfection Paralysis
Waiting until your voice is "perfect" before sharing your work means you'll never develop your voice at all.
Voice develops through practice and feedback, not isolation and overthinking.
Many writers spend years "preparing" to write—reading craft books, taking classes, perfecting their style—without actually writing and sharing their work with readers.
Your voice won't emerge in a vacuum. It develops through the messy process of writing, getting feedback, revising, and writing some more.
Your voice will evolve throughout your entire writing career—start where you are, not where you think you should be.
Even established authors like Ivey continue evolving their voice with each book.
The goal isn't to perfect your voice before you begin; it's to begin so your voice can develop.
The Generic Approach
Writing what you think will appeal to the broadest audience often results in a voice that appeals to no one.
Specific, authentic details resonate more powerfully than generic ones.
This mistake usually comes from fear—fear that your particular background, interests, or perspective won't be "relatable enough" for mainstream success.
So writers strip away the specific details that make their work distinctive.
The small-town Southern details become a generic American town. The immigrant family experience becomes vague "family drama."
But specificity is what makes writing memorable and distinctive.
Ivey doesn't write about generic wilderness—she writes about her specific Alaska.
That specificity is exactly what makes her voice so recognizable and powerful.
Your Action Plan: Uncovering Your Authentic Voice
1. Inventory Your Genuine Experiences
Think about the places you've lived, jobs you've held, relationships that shaped you, and experiences that changed your perspective.
Which of these could inform your writing in unique ways? Even if you think it’s too boring, try using something specific from your lived experience in a scene. You may be surprised by the results!
2. Identify Your Natural Fascinations
What subjects do you research for fun? What kinds of conversations energize you? What aspects of human behavior do you find endlessly interesting?
Your strongest voice will emerge when writing about your genuine obsessions.
Readers love passion. Find yours.
3. Embrace Your Perspective
Instead of trying to write objectively, lean into your particular way of seeing the world.
What do you notice that others miss? What patterns do you see that seem invisible to everyone else? These idiosynchronies can be fascinating in a character.
4. Write Your Truth, Not The Truth
Don't worry about writing universal truths in a bid to appeal to the widest audience. Instead, write your specific, authentic experience of truth.
Paradoxically, the more specific and personal you are, the more universally your work will resonate.
5. Give Yourself Permission to Evolve
Your voice today doesn't have to be your voice forever. Eowyn Ivey's voice has undoubtedly evolved from her first novel to her latest.
Allow your voice to grow as you grow. It might start out similar to your favorite author, but over time, blossom into something brand new.
Celebrate Your Writing’s Uniqueness
Your unique writing voice isn't a mystery to be solved—it's a natural expression of who you are and how you see the world.
Eowyn Ivey's voice is distinctive not because she studied voice development techniques, but because she writes authentically from her genuine life experience and passionate fascination with her subject matter.
Think back to that opening truth: your voice is being forged every day through the life you're actually living.
The morning commute that frustrates you, the relationship that challenges you, the hobby that energizes you—all of it is shaping the writer you're becoming.
The question isn't "How do I find my voice?" but "How do I trust the voice that's already emerging from my authentic experience?"
Stop trying to sound like someone else and start paying attention to what makes your perspective uniquely valuable.
That's where your strongest, most distinctive voice lives—and where your readers are waiting to find you.
Next in our Wilderness & Wisdom series, we'll explore one of the most counterintuitive career strategies in publishing: why Eowyn Ivey's slow, patient approach to releasing books is actually a brilliant business strategy. Read about it in, “The Patience of True Craft: Why Eowyn Ivey's 'Slow Publishing' Career Is Actually Brilliant.”
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