Find Your Uniqueness As A Writer

Great common sense here. Wish I'd thuhgot of that.

I like to think that some (not all) of my recipes and projects are unique and have my voice, but I honestly don't know if they do. I hope so though. I do know that I enjoy writing them and doing all of the prep for the article. Unfortunately for the types of things I write about, readers don't usually want long intros and descriptions, they like the pictures and instructions. It's tough to get that balance. Another thought-provoking hub Bill.

My uniqueness is easy. I am a passionate storyteller that brings life directly from the page to your mind's eye...

Thanks for such a compliment - relaxed and enjoyable I can cope with very well! Yes, you're right about developing; I feel my writing here has developed in a way I didn't expect. I've grown in confidence and found a 'niche'.

I think we have a mutual appreciation society here!!

You picked the best quote to begin with; that Oscar Wilde's a goodie isn't he?

I can't say easily what my style is - does that mean I don't have one? I like to inform and to help (re. dyslexia), I like to celebrate the beauty of nature (travel hubs) and I like to fire the imagination (fiction) but out of all that I can't say 'I have 'that' particular style.'

What's clear is that style is imperative. Any famous author is known by his or her unique writing. Blanket writing - general waffle smothered in a blanket - is dire.

Your style is clear - you talk to us as though you were present, you have a refreshing humour, yet at the same time your bite definitely does reflect your bark! Wholly recognisable and thoroughly entertaining, whatever the mood.

I'll stop rambling now (is that my style?)!! Ann

billybuc Dear bro. It has been a time since I stopped in for a visit. Its been a busy season and I am working to get back to hubs. I just love coming to your neighborhood. You are such a sweetheart. So giving and heartfelt. Thank you for sharing all of your nuggets with us writers. I have learned a great deal from your works. I am so grateful to God for leading me to your path. This writing truly is a gem and I agree. I think in time we come to a place in writing where we develop our signature and it comes in the soul searching through writing by the Spirit of God. He reveals more to us. Writing is a gift indeed, Amen. I do pray you and your have a healthy happy and prosperious new year bill. Keep em coming and know you are so appreciated and loved by your fans. This one included. Thank You. Hugs galore. Your sister Skye

passing this along!! voted.

Bill,

A writer's style is a very hard topic to communicate. Finding a writer's style is such a personal journey, with no perfect path to enlightenment. It is messy, and sends you down all kinds of straight and crooked paths. There is a moment that every writer feels, when the words line up like magic, as if the writer were born for those words. The words come forth from some mysterious and eternal place, determined to hit their mark. There is a point when the words no longer come from the mind, but from the soul.

I often wish I could have had tea with some of “the greats” that you mentioned. What a wonderful treat to enter the mind of Hemingway. Yes, in this world people may make money off of cheap words, but they will eventually get lost in the Google cosmos never to be seen again. However, the works of the real artists, they will remain forever. Generations beyond will be their judge of greatness.

I love your thoughts on style: "A writer’s style takes time. It is the culmination of a life lived. It is the combination of thoughts and experiences that each of us has."

Put ten articles in front of me and I could definitely pick out which one is yours. This follower appreciates everything you give to the writing community.

Jen

“What I am saying is this: style, or voice if you will, takes a long time to develop…"

"If you are an avid reader then you know what I say is true. What makes Stephen King unique? What made Steinbeck unique? Poe? Hemingway? You could give me a random page from Steinbeck without telling me who wrote it and I would be able to identify his writing. Can others do that with your writing? Even your most avid followers….could they identify your writing?...”

Exactly. It takes time find our unique voice, and to embrace it with confidence and purpose. This is not an easy task...it takes quite a bit of time and dedication. Some writers don’t care about this. Other writers who seek substance, style and meaning that convey like no other, do.

Interesting hub Bill. Was away for the last ten days but it's good to be back reading your words of wisdom. What makes us unique is an interesting question. I love to explore new places and I hope that comes across in my writing. I try to give readers who have not visited these places a vision of what they are like and what they can expect should they visit someday.

Good to be back, have a great Sunday.

I agree that we all have something that makes us one of a kind.

Very articulate hub on the subject Bill--I think finding your own voice and exploring that is one of the toughest things about writing--it is so tempting to copy another person's voice--

I could really relate to this hub. I have learned what kind of writer I am. When I'm bloggin in my native language, my readers say I'm a good writer. Maybe they say it because they know me, LOL! Sometimes I acutally surprise myself when I've written something. :)

One of my hubs have been on first place for a very long time now and I put much time on writing it and added many photos I've taken myself. It's rewarding to see that my efforts paid off.

Right now I'm not writing much, but I'm reading "the millennium trilogy" by the Swedish author Stieg Larsson. He was an amazing author and I think I'll be inspired by his style when I get back to writing more. Of course I'm not going to copy him, but by reading novels I'm learning new styles to try out when I write.

I'm still trying to find my unique voice. But, you hit on something that caught my attention - become engulfed with experiences. I discovered that I write better when I get out and mingle more with society. Every experience brings enlightenment and helps me develop characters and scenes more vividly than if I just tried to imagine it in my head. For instance, just yesterday I was at the dentist's office and I noticed one of the attendants had a very unique haircut. It was quite flattering and so I told her how pretty her hair was. She was thrilled to get the compliment and she was very animated as she described how she came to achieve that style. The smile on her face, her body language and gestures, and the happy tone in her voice all worked to help me develop a unique character for a little something I'm working on right now. She has become my model for this character. Yep! Experiencing life makes writing better. At least for me it does.

So your goal should be to raise a writer (you) from infancy to fully-functioning adult, an adult easily identified because of your uniqueness of style and voice.

Oh yes spot on Billy .Another wonderful lesson by you and what a great teacher you are. I know I am repeating myself here but I am learning far more from you than I am from my Writing Course. I am determined to complete it but oh how slow it gores ha ha!!

Thank you again and I wish you and Bev a great weekend and lots of love from my little corner of Wales.

Eddy.

Hey Bill ~ This is just the hub I needed to read right now....since the two MSs I have been working on are now ready to receive some more attention from me. I've been practicing the promotional side of being an author with my gardening book published in 2010...and taking on more work from my employer to complete at home for some much-needed extra pay.

But now, my muses have been calling me back to working on new material within MSs that are beginning to suffer from a long bout of "cabin fever." It's weird...they really are sending me messages to pay more attention to them by "prompting" people to ask me if I have been writing anything new lately,,,and sending me "snippets" of action scenes and story details to write down....enticing me to return to more dedicated writing...including a return to more regular hub publishing ...and leading me to read this hub of yours...and I'm "all ears" for their message! I am ready to dive back into the sea of ideas waiting for me to develop them!

Thanks, Bill! I voted this hub Up, Useful, Awesome, and Interesting. Hope you are having a great Saturday!

Interesting hub Billy. We as publishers immediately recognize if a new submission writer does have a 'writing Signature' as we call it. If they do not have it, then we suspect that the writer has copied a lot of the text from the internet. There is no strong "Signature"

The voice of the writer must be prominent. Therefore my own signature does have a 'Dutch' slant to it, so some readers have told me.

Great thoughts in this hub, Bill.

My work will reflect me and my personal thoughts.

That is about as unique as I can make it.

Strangely, there has been someone or something that keeps me

reaching to tell this story. As you well know, the story and the characters

take on a life of their own. I am on an adventure, learning more history

than I ever cared to know. My novel is a work in progress, as am I.

But, Oh, what a ride!!

Many thanks, Bill.

DJ.

Bill, I guess I still have a lot of work to do. :)

I get what you're saying about finding our unique style, funnily enough, I clicked on an old hub from my Pinterest page a few days ago, and started to read, after a couple of lines I just knew it was one of yours, I could almost hear your voice, although the title was a bit of a give away. Another very useful and informative piece of work. Have a lovely weekend, my best as always.

Ok, me again.

So I wrote an epistle and for some reason all you see is a 'hi bill.' O my

I just shared that I had found my unique voice when I was a junior in college. I used to help others with their term papers and I guess on one I helped too much. It was a very small college where I did my undergraduate work so often professors sat with us after class. One day my journalism teacher sat with me, alone. He began to discuss a paper that I had "helped' a friend write. He finally said, this is your work, isnt it?

And I just smiled. I guess my 'uniqueness' was too evident.

And the point is well made by you.

It is distinguishing to have your voice shine through in your work. With me, I did not work to develop it. It has just found itself and translates into letters, then words, and the idea and voila, you see me or at least some of who I am .

I keep coming back to read as I know there will always be something here that I relish.

Angels are winging their way to you and Bev and the Chicks. have a blessed weekend ps

Hi bill

Alas, I am still an infant as I haven't found my style. But I'm learning fast and am keen. Hence I keep reading your counsel. I have taken a lot from these videos too. The only thing that bothers me is maybe - just maybe - im not so much of an artist as I'd like to be! (and I'm not looking for complements by the way, just speaking frankly)

Hi Billybuc, I guess it depends on what audience you are writing for. If I was writing answer-to-question type hubs, I would expect the answer quickly, with no real style, just facts. However, if I was reading something funny, fictional or even historical, I would expect a little more from the writer so that they could retain my interest.

I can definitely imagine the difference between a serious university lecturer with no sense of humour writing about Australian history, versus someone like yourself writing the same thing, with your style. I have to admit it would be very very obvious which one I'd prefer to read.

You do not have dinosaur views at all. Your hubs on writing are amazing, fascinating to read and very well written. And writers love it! So don't mark yourself out of date just yet. Just keep injecting you, whether with humour, sarcasm, bitterness, wonder or joy and inject your emotion in, as we, the readers cannot get enough of you, baby!

Voted awesome and up. Love it.

Thank you Bill, for once again helping aspiring authors! This is wonderful to read. And it is comforting to know that as I was reading. I noticed, I am on the right track with carving out my niche and unique trademark style of the way I wish to be known. So Awesome!

Up and & shared. Blessings always my friend. :-)

Whoo, you know it dear Bill,

We are all very unique, not one anywhere just like us! I truly believe that each one of us has a special something to share through our writings that makes us unique and when people read our writing, they know we have written it! No one else has experienced exactly what we have in this life, maybe something similar, but never exactly and we all have certain gifts and wisdom with which we have been given to share with each other and we can certainly do so through our writing.

I know you just have to be you and I just have to be, and that is the way it should be and we should never try to conform to fit into another one's mold!

Up and more and sharing (We can share now on Pinterest again!)

Have a great weekend.

Blessings,

Faith Reaper

Hi bill, I totally understand what you mean, everybody has a bit of their personality in their writing, and just by reading it that comes across, I think I have a style, not sure! lol! and of course its whether the style is interesting or not, great advice as always, nell

I believe i would know your writing style anywhere. Another helpful hub for sure. uniqueness is something to strive for. Thank you Bill.

Speaking of Stephen King - I saw an interview once they were doing with him and they asked him some of the same questions you ask here. He said what made his style unique was that a good many writers could describe someone in an elevator shaft looking up and seeing an elevator coming down, but he could describe what happened when the elevator landed on top of this person. Yep - that's Stephen King, alright!

I found this hub to be thought-provoking and I think I'll take a second look at my own style. By the way, I had a literature teacher in school who made us keep a journal all semester. When we started, I thought it was a real pain. Then I realized, it was very therapeutic. I found out later in life that many writers keep them - if nothing else to jot down ideas they may get in the middle of the night.

Fascinating hub.

I have no idea if l have a recognisable style of writing.

You managed to make this unique even when writing about RECIPES.

One of the most mundane things l can think of . You are brilliant.

Not everyone cares about taking the time to write at a higher level. A you wrote, for some people it's just producing one e-book after the other hoping to get money more through quantity than quality. I suppose everyone has his or her own value. But at the end of the game, those people will probably never be remembered either and will fall into oblivion.

When I write about a project, I try to make it simple and complete enough for people who might be interested creating this project. But most of the time, I try also to add other informations because I find it easier to remember facts when it can be associate with a concrete project (painting, 3-D, collage, etc.).

Have a fantastic weekend, Bill!

Elementary, my dear Holland.

A recipe needs a little spice for Holmes to snap at it! Maybe young Oliver would like a bowlful? Let's see what we can add to the pudding without changing the nature of the dish. How about a bit less of the third person and making it more personal, and less like the Queen's speech (that some turnip-head in Whitehall has written for her)?

I know.

How about first person, present tense (all the way through)? Well it works! And laced with italics? That's got to be the spice, but not so much 'laced' as 'scattered', to make your reader sit up and beg like a prize pooch at Cruft's (Nice dog, Towser, I said 'pooch' not 'Staffy'. Here, have a bone and run off back to your typewriter, do a write-up for a dog show if you can't do book reviews).

I think if the writer is true to his or her muse and follows the voice that flows through the soul then style has to emerge. If there is no muse to listen to then that writer should probably not aspire to taking random web hits on hub pages and bubblews. Great advice, friend, and congrats to your Seahawks. Thank your guys for giving us a boring, lopsided Super Bowl.

I hope I have surpassed the toddler stage and reached adolescence with style and voice in my writing. It has been a battle - one I hope well fought. With hubs like this, how could any of us staunch followers of yours fail? Thanks, Bill. This helps tremendously.

Kim

I have to admit I don't yet know if I have a unique style when it comes to writing hubs. I'm still fairly new at this type of writing and I feel I'm still developing my own voice. I'm also sure you and the other people who read my hubs may already see something unique that I don't see there. When it comes to my novels, I think my uniqueness is in the way I tell the story and develop my characters from the points of view of more than the perceptions of only a few of the main characters.

I'm finding that voice. Although I like writing all kinds of things and have tried on different hats, anything with a hint of snark comes the easiest. It just flows. Call it that inner self-critical voice that taunts a bit but is always on your side.

I enjoyed reading this, Bill. Well done, as ever. The recipe writer now have a complex due to this and other references you make to them elsewhere; you know that? Just sayin'. Maybe we should all write a recipe hub, ensuring our writer's voice shines through. That could get weird, you know.

I feel that finding ones voice is extremely important yet seems to take years of practice to find. Jamie

You are absolutely right billybuc. The best sold writers and novelists have their own unique writing styles. However, style does take a while to develop. If you are writing daily, several times per week or writing for living it may happen faster.

Fun topic today. The strange thing is that I never really thought about why style was so important, I just knew that for some reason it mattered. I always considered my personal style as a kind of "stew" made up from pieces of all my literary heroes. A pinch of this and a pinch of that with a twist of "Brian" and...voila! Have a great weekend.

p.s. Must you always have a go at the poor recipe writers? Just teasing.

Well Bill, I want those majestic mountains so I had better get stuck in and start developing a style.

This could be the slap with the wet fish that I needed. Thanks.

Bill, I do believe I have my own style, but the hardest part is to get readers to start, with their own ideas to impart.

This is a great help, especially to new writers. Thank you Bill for that.

Once I wrote a letter to the editor of our local newspaper. Then one day at work my phone rings and Hubby said: "I am reading a letter to the editor and it sounds just like you!" And then he asked, "WHEN DID YOU WRITE THIS?"

I know that you have your own style and you are unique, that is why I read what you write.

And I will join you on your blog, but not at the moment, I have too much going on right now.

ref. Join me on my writing blog •Artistry With Words

Great Article

Bill, this is so good and so important. I'd like to believe that I do have a unique voice and style of writing that is distinguishable from others. I'd love to hear your honest critique about that when you have time. I also think having a unique style of writing helps deter copyright infringement because if you have made your work too identifiable, it makes it harder for someone to get away with stealing and duplicating your work. Thanks for the wisdom, voted up and useful.

We all take a long time to search for that voice and then hone it. Most important is to keep to it!

Find Your Uniqueness As A Writer is an interesting hub and uniqueness is great in all writers.

Wonderful stuff here. Enough to contemplate for a day.

I would hope that someone could identify my writing whether it was a recipe or any other article. :)

Looking like I am the first to comment makes me unique at this moment ;) Hopefully my writing style, voice and uniqueness come from my sense of humor and love of life and laughter. It would be easier for another to testify to this but that is my goal.

This, as always, is a great treat for any writer.

Voted up useful, and interesting.

I have been struggling to get my share buttons back on but haven't been able to as yet.