Blogging Assignment #9

The author's perspective on voice is that we should have a tint of our own voice no matter what we write. Whether it's a formal piece, or just a fiction story we're writing, you should be able to tell that it's YOUR writing and it's all YOU. You can change your voice to have a different feel, but if you're going to do that, do it the right way. Study excellent authors who have the kind of feel that you want to achieve, and study their writing good. Don't think that you'll lose your voice and your self when you study other authors and imitate them. You'll soon "shed those layers" (quote from the article) and find that your voice is intact, but with this new feel to it.

Don't use cliches. It just ruins the voice, the taste of writing, everything. It's so bland, and boring, and readers want fresh things. They automatically assume you can't think of something fresh if you use a cliche. So avoid them. And TASTE. The author of this article emphasizes taste. Writers with taste will know when to add something in or take something out. They'll know just how much, and it'll be good. It'll be perfect. But writers without taste will add everything they can think of, and it clutters the writing. They block it up, choke it, over-do it. It's not good. Simple is usually good, but eloquent is better. If you can achieve eloquence without cluttering, use it.

I agree with the second part of his article. Cliches are boring, and so we have to avoid them. Same for taste; I think that people with good taste will excel at whatever they have taste in. But I'm not so sure about the first part of his article. I don't exactly think you should try and keep your voice in everything. Especially for people like me, who tend to have a little sarcastic feel in their writing, wouldn't want to use it for something formal. My voice changes a bit for my writing: my fiction stories, my research reports, my poems are all a little different. I agree that if you want to pull off a specific kind of feel, you should study it and try it out.